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THE REVOLT OF 
THE OYSTER 



BOOKS BY DON MARQUIS 



Cruise of the Jasper B. 

Danny's Own Story 

Dreams and Dust 

Hermione and Her Little Group of 

Serious Thinkers 
Poems and Portraits 
Prefaces (Decorations by Tony Sarg) 
Sonnets to a Red-Haired Lady and 

Famous Love Affairs 
The Old Soak and Hail and Farewell 
The Revolt of the Oyster 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



The Revolt of the Oyster i 

"If We Could Only See" i8 

How Hank Signed the Pledge 38 

Accursed Hat! 58 

Rooney's Touchdown 65 

Too American 78 

The Saddest Man 102 

Dogs AND Boys 133 

The Kidnapping OF Bill Patterson 151 

Blood Will Tell 171 

Being a Public Character 182 

Written in Blood 198 



THE REVOLT OF 
THE OYSTER 

BY 
DON MARQUIS 




GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1922 






COPYRIGHT, I912, I913, 1922, BY 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 

INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT, I913, I9IS1 I917, BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT, 1920, I92I, BY CONSOLIDATED MAGAZINES CORPORATION (tHE 

RED-BOOK MAGAZINE). ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY COLUMBIA PUBLISHING COMPANY 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 

AT 

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 

FxT$t Edition 



l^0V23 






C1A686992 



THE REVOLT OF 
THE OYSTER 



THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

"Our remote ancestor was probably arboreal." — Eminent scientist. 

From his hut in the tree-top Probably Arboreal 
looked lazily down a broad vista, still strewn with fallen 
timber as the result of a whirlwind that had once played 
havoc in that part of the forest, toward the sea. Be- 
yond the beach of hard white sand the water lay blue 
and vast and scarcely ruffled by the light morning 
wind. All the world and his wife were out fishing 
this fine day. Probably Arboreal could see dozens of 
people from where he crouched, splashing in the water 
or moving about the beach, and even hear their cries 
borne faintly to him on the breeze. They fished, for 
the most part, with their hands; and when one caught 
a fish it was his custom to eat it where he caught it, 
standing in the sea. 

In Probably Arboreal's circle, one often bathed and 
breakfasted simultaneously; if a shark or saurian were 
too quick for one, one sometimes was breakfasted upon 
as one bathed. 

In the hut next to Probably Arboreal, his neighbour. 
Slightly Simian, was having an argument with Mrs. 
Slightly, as usual. And, as usual, it concerned the 



2 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

proper manner of bringing up the children. Probably 
listened with the bored distaste of a bachelor. 

"I will slap his feet every time he picks things up 
with them!" screamed Slightly Simian's wife, an ac- 
credited shrew, in her shrill falsetto. 

"It's natural for a child to use his feet that way," 
insisted the good-natured Slightly, "and I don't intend 
to have the boy punished for what's natural." Prob- 
ably Arboreal grinned; he could fancy the expression 
on Old Sim's face as his friend made this characte«s- 
tically plebeian plea. 

"You can understand once for all, Slightly," said that 
gentleman's wife in a tone of finality, "that I intend 
to supervise the bringing-up of these children. Just be- 
cause your people had neither birth nor breeding nor 
manners " 

"Mrs. S. !" broke in Slightly, with a warning in his 
voice. "Don't you work around to anything caudal, 
now, Mrs. S. ! Or there'll be trouble. You get 
me?" 

On one occasion Mrs. Slightly had twitted her spouse 
with the fact that his grandfather had a tail five inches 
long; she had never done so again. Slightly Simian 
himself, in his moments of excitement, picked things 
up with his feet, but like many other men of humble 
origin who have become personages in their maturity, he 
did not relish having such faults commented upon. 

"Poor old Sim," mused Probably Arboreal, as he 
slid down the tree and ambled toward the beach, to 
be out of range of the family quarrel. "She married 



THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 3 

him for his property, and now she's sore on him because 
there isn't more of it." 

Nevertheless, in spite of the unpleasant effect of the 
quarrel, Probably found his mind dwelling upon matri- 
mony that morning. A girl with bright red hair, into 
which she had tastefully braided a number of green 
parrot feathers, hit him coquettishly between the 
shoulder blades with a handful of wet sand and gravel 
as he went into the water. Ordinarily he would either 
have taken no notice at all of her, or else would have 
broken her wrist in a slow, dignified, manly sort of way. 
But this morning he grabbed her tenderly by the hair 
and sentimentally ducked her. When she was nearly 
drowned he released her. She came out of the water 
squealing with rage like a wild-cat and bit him on the 
shoulder. 

"Parrot Feathers," he said to her, with an unwonted 
softness in his eyes, as he clutched her by the throat 
and squeezed, ''beware how you trifle with a man's 
affections — some day I may take you seriously!" 

He let the girl squirm loose, and she scrambled out 
upon the beach and threw shells and jagged pieces of 
flint at him, with an affectation of coyness. He chased 
her, caught her by the hair again, and scored the wet 
skin on her arms with a sharp stone, until she screamed 
with the pain, and as he did it he hummed an old love 
tune, for to-day there was an April gladness in his heart. 

"Probably! Probably Arboreal!" He spun around 
to face the girl's father. Crooked Nose, who was con- 
tentedly munching a mullet. 



4 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

"Probably," said Crooked Nose, "you are flirting 
with my daughter!" 

"Father!" breathed the girl, ashamed of her parent's 
tactlessness. "How can you say that!" 

"I want to know," said Crooked Nose, as sternly as 
a man can who is masticating mullet, "whether your in- 
tentions are serious and honourable." 

"Oh, father!" said Parrot Feathers again. And put- 
ting her hands in front of her face to hide her blushes 
she ran off. Nevertheless, she paused when a dozen 
feet away and threw a piece of drift-wood at Probably 
Arboreal. It hit him on the shin, and as he rubbed the 
spot, watching her disappear into the forest, he mur- 
mured aloud, "Now, I wonder what she means by that!" 

"Means," said Crooked Nose. "Don't be an ass. 
Probably! Don't pretend to 7ne you don't know what 
the child means. You made her love you. You have ex- 
ercised your arts of fascination on an innocent young 
girl, and now you have the nerve to wonder what she 
means. What'll you give me for her?" 

"See here. Crooked Nose," said Probably, "don't 
bluster with me." His finer sensibilities were out- 
raged. He did not intend to be coerced into matrimony 
by any father, even though he were pleased with that 
father's daughter. "I'm not buying any wives to-day. 
Crooked Nose." 

"You have hurt her market value," said Crooked 
Nose, dropping his domineering air, and affecting a 
willingness to reason. "Those marks on her arms will 
not come off for weeks. And what man wants to marry 



THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 5 



;a scarred-up woman unless he has made the scars him- 
self?" 

"Crooked Nose," said Probably Arboreal, angry at 
the whole world because what might have been a youth- 
ful romance had been given such a sordid turn by this 
disgusting father, "if you don't go away I will scar 
every daughter you've got in your part of the woods. 
Do you get me?" 

"I wish you'd look them over," said Crooked Nose. 
"You might do worse than marry all of them." 

"I'll marry none of them!" cried Probably, in a rage, 
and turned to go into the sea again. 

A heavy boulder hurtled past his head. He whirled 
about and discovered Crooked Nose in the act of re- 
covering his balance after having flung it. He caught 
the old man half way between the beach and the edge 
of the forest. The clan, including Crooked Nose's 
four daughters, gathered round in a ring to watch the 
fight. 

It was not much of a combat. When it was over, 
and the girls took hold of what remained of their late 
parent to drag him into the woods. Probably Arboreal 
stepped up to Parrot Feathers and laid his hand upon 
her arm. 

"Feathers," he said, "now that there can be no 
question of coercion, will you and your sisters marry 
me?" 

She turned toward him with a sobered face. Grief 
had turned her from a girl into a woman. 

"Probably," she said, "you are only making this 



6 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

offer out of generosity. It is not love that prompts it. 
I cannot accept. As for my sisters, they must speak 
for themselves." 

'Tou are angry with me, Feathers?" 

The girl turned sadly away. Probably watched the 
funeral cortege winding into the woods, and then went 
moodily back to the ocean. Now that she had refused 
him, he desired her above all things. But how to win 
her? He saw clearly that it could be no question of 
brute force. It had gone beyond that. If he used 
force with her, it must infallibly remind her of the un- 
fortunate affair with her father. Some heroic action 
might attract her to him again. Prabably resolved to 
be a hero at the very earliest opportunity. 

In the meantime he would breakfast. Breakfast 
had already been long delayed; and it was as true then, 
far back in the dim dawn of time, as it is now, that he 
who does not breakfast at some time during the day 
must go hungry to bed at night. Once more Probably 
Arboreal stepped into the ocean — stepped in without 
any premonition that he was to be a hero indeed; that 
he was chosen by Fate, by Destiny, by the Presiding 
Genius of this planet, by whatever force or intelligence 
you will, to champion the cause of all Mankind in a 
crucial struggle for human supremacy. 

He waded into the water up to his waist, and bent 
forward with his arms beneath the surface, patiently 
waiting. It was thus that our remote ancestors fished. 
Fish ran larger in those days, as a rule. In the deeper 
waters they were monstrous. The smaller fish there- 



THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 7 

ifore sought the shallows where the big ones, greedy 
cannibals, could not follow them. A man seldom stood 

jin the sea as Probably Arboreal was doing more than 

I ten minutes without a fish brushing against him either 
accidentally or because the fish thought the man was 
something good to eat. As soon as a fish touched him, 
the man would grab for it. If he were clumsy and 

I missed too many fish, he starved to death. Experts 
survived because they were expert; by a natural proc- 
ess of weeding out the awkward it had come about 
that men were marvellously adept. A bear who stands 

I by the edge of a river watching for salmon at the time of 
the year when they run up stream to spawn, and scoops 
them from the water with a deft twitch of his paw, was 
not more quick or skillful than Probably Arboreal. 

Suddenly he pitched forward, struggling; he gave a 
gurgling shout, and his head disappeared beneath the 
water. 

When it came up again, he twisted toward the shore, 
with lashing arms and something like panic on his face, 
and shouted: 

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he cried. "Something has me by 
the foot!" 
Twenty or thirty men and women who heard the 

j cry stopped fishing and straightened up to look at him. 

I "Help! Help!" he shouted again. "It is pulling 

I me out to sea!" 

A knock-kneed old veteran, with long intelligent- 

( looking mobile toes, broke from the surf and scurried 
to the safety of the beach, raising the cry: 



8 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

"A god! A god! A water-god has caught Prob- 
ably Arboreal!" 

"More likely a devil!" cried Slightly Simian, who 
had followed Probably to the water. 

And all his neighbours plunged to land and left 
Probably Arboreal to his fate, whatever his fate was to 
be. But since spectacles are always interesting, they 
sat down comfortably on the beach to see how long it 
would be before Probably Arboreal disappeared. Gods 
and devils, sharks and octopi, were forever grabbing 
one of their number and making off to deep water with 
him to devour him at their leisure. If the thing that 
dragged the man were seen, if it showed itself to be a 
shark or an octopus, a shark or an octopus it was; if 
it were unseen, it got the credit of being a god or a 
devil. 

"Help me!" begged Probably Arboreal, who was now 
holding his own, although he was not able to pull him- 
self into shallower water. "It is not a god or a devil. 
It doesn't feel like one. And it isn't a shark, because 
it hasn't any teeth. It is an animal like a cleft stick, 
and my foot is in the cleft." 

But they did not help him. Instead, Big Mouth, 
a seer and vers libre poet of the day, smitten suddenly 
with an idea, raised a chant, and presently all the others 
joined in. The chant went like this: 

"Probably, he killed Crooked Nose, 

He killed him with his fists. 

And Crooked Nose, he sent his ghost to sea 



THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 9 

To catch his slayer by the foot! 

The ghost of Crooked Nose will drown his 

slayer, 
Drown, drown, drown his slayer. 
The ghost of Crooked Nose will drown his 

slayer, 
Drown his slayer in the sea!" 

"You are a liar, Big Mouth!" spluttered Probably 
Arboreal, hopping on one foot and thrashing the 
water with his arms. "It is not a ghost; it is an 
animal." 

But the chant kept up, growing louder and louder: 

"The ghost of Crooked Nose will drown his 

slayer! 
Drown, drown, drown his slayer, 
Drown his slayer in the sea!" 

Out of the woods came running more and more 
people at the noise of the chant. And as they 
caught what was going on, they took up the burden 
of it, until hundreds and thousands of them were 
singing it. 

But, with a mighty turn and struggle, Probably 
Arboreal went under again, as to his head and body; 
his feet for an instant swished into the air, and every- 
one but Probably Arboreal himself saw what was 
hanging on to one of them. 

It was neither ghost, shark, god, nor devil. It 



10 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

was a monstrous oyster; a bull oyster, evidently. All 
oysters were much larger in those days than they are 
now, but this oyster was a giant, a mastodon, a mam- 
moth among oysters, even for those days. 

'it is an oyster, an oyster, an oyster!" cried the 
crowd, as Probably Arboreal's head and shoulders 
came out of the water again. 

Big Mouth, the poet, naturally chagrined, and 
hating to yield up his dramatic idea, tried to raise 
another chant: 

''The ghost of Crooked Nose went into an 

oyster, 
The oyster caught his slayer by the foot 
To drown, drown, drown him in the seal" 

But it didn't work. The world had seen that oyster, 
and had recognized it for an oyster. 

"Oyster! Oyster! Oyster!" cried the crowd sternly 
at Big Mouth. 

The bard tried to persevere, but Slightly Simian, feel- 
ing the crowd with him, advanced menacingly and said: 

"See here. Big Mouth, we know a ghost when we see 
one, and we know an oyster! Yon animal is an oyster! 
You sing that it is an oyster, or shut up!" 

"Ghost, ghost, ghost," chanted Big Mouth, tenta- 
tively. But he got no farther. Slightly Simian killed 
him with a club, and the matter was settled. Liter- 
ary criticism was direct, straightforward, and effective 
in those days. 



THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 11 

"But, oh, ye gods of the water, what an oyster!" cried 
Mrs. Slightly Simian. 

And as the thought took them all, a silence fell over 
the multitude. They looked at the struggling man in 
a new community of idea. Oysters they had seen be- 
fore, but never an oyster like this. Oysters they knew 
not as food; but they had always regarded them as 
rather ineffectual and harmless creatures. Yet this 
bold oyster was actually giving battle, and on equal 
terms, to a man ! Were oysters henceforth to be added 
to the number of man's enemies? Were oysters about 
to attempt to conquer mankind? This oyster, was he 
the champion of the sea, sent up out of its depths, to 
grapple with mankind for supremacy? 

Dimly, vaguely, as they watched the man attempt 
to pull the oyster ashore, and the oyster attempt to pull 
the man out to sea, some sense of the importance of this 
struggle was felt by mankind. Over forest, beach, and 
ocean hung the sense of momentous things. A haze 
passed across the face of the bright morning sun; the 
breeze died down; it was as if all nature held her 
breath at this struggle. And if mankind upon the land 
was interested, the sea was no less concerned. For, 
of a sudden, and as if by preconcerted signal, a hundred 
thousand oysters poked their heads above the surface of 
the waters and turned their eyes — they had small fiery 
opalescent eyes in those days — upon the combat. 

At this appearance, mankind drew back with a gasp, 
but no word was uttered. The visible universe, per- 
turbed earth and bending heavens alike, was tense and 



12 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

dumb. On their part, the oysters made no attempt to 
go to the assistance of their champion. Nor did man- 
kind leap to the rescue of Probably Arboreal. Tacitly, 
each side, in a spirit of fair play, agreed not to interfere; 
agreed to leave the combat to the champions; agreed 
to abide by the issue. 

But while they were stirred and held by the sense of 
tremendous things impending, neither men nor oysters, 
could be expected to understand definitely what almost 
infinite things depended upon this battle. There were 
no Darwins then. Evolution had not yet evblved 
the individual able to catch her at it. 

But she was on her way. This very struggle was one 
of the crucial moments in the history of evolution. 
There have always been these critical periods when the 
two highest species in the world were about equal in in- 
telligence, and it was touch and go as to which would 
survive and carry on the torch, and which species would 
lose the lead and become subservient. There have al- 
ways been exact instants when the spirit of progress 
hesitated as between the forms of life, doubtful as to 
which one to make its representative. 

Briefly, if the oyster conquered the man, more and 
more oysters, emboldened by this success, would prey 
upon men. Man, in the course of a few hundred thou- 
sand years, would become the creature of the oyster; 
the oyster's slave and food. Then the highest type of 
life on the planet would dwell in the sea. The civiliza- 
tion which was not yet would be a marine growth 
when it did come; the intellectual and spiritual and 



THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 13 

physical supremacy held by the biped would pass over 
to the bivalve. 

Thought could not frame this concept then; neither 
shellfish nor tree-dweller uttered it. But both the 
species felt it; they watched Probably Arboreal and 
the oyster with a strangling emotion, with a quivering 
intentness, that was none the less poignant because there 
was no Huxley or Spencer present to interpret it for 
them; they thrilled and sweat and shivered with the 
shaken universe, and the red sun through its haze 
peered down unwinking like the vast bloodshot eye of 
life. 

An hour had passed by in silence except for the sound 
of the battle, more and more men and more and more 
oysters had gathered about the scene of the struggle; 
the strain was telling on both champions. Probably 
Arboreal had succeeded in dragging the beast some ten 
feet nearer the shore, but the exertion had told upon 
him; he was growing tired; he was breathing with 
difficulty; he had swallowed a great deal of salt water. 
He too was dimly conscious of the importance of this 
frightful combat; he felt himself the representative of 
the human race. He was desperate but cool; he saved 
his breath; he opposed to the brute force of the oyster 
the cunning of a man. But he was growing weaker; 
he felt it. 

If only those for whom he was fighting would fling 
him some word of encouragement! He was too proud 
to ask it, but he felt bitterly that he was not supported, 
for he could not realize what emotion had smitten 



14 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

dumb his fellow men. He had got to the place where a 
word of spiritual comfort and encouragement would 
have meant as much as fifty pounds of weight in his 
favour. 

He had, in fact, arrived at the Psychological Moment. 
There were no professing psychologists then; but there 
was psychology; and it worked itself up into moments 
even as it does to-day. 

Probably Arboreal's head went under the water, tears 
and salt ocean mingled nauseatingly in his mouth. 

"I am lost," he gurgled. 

But at that instant a shout went up — the shrill, 
high cry of a woman. Even in his agony he recognized 
that voice — the voice of Parrot Feathers! With a 
splendid rally he turned his face toward the shore. 

She was struggling through the crowd, fighting her 
way to the front rank with the fury of a wildcat. She 
had just buried her father, and the earth was still dark 
and damp upon her hands, but the magnificent creature 
had only one thought now. She thought only of her 
lover, her heroic lover; in her nobility of soul she had 
been able to rise above the pettiness of spirit which 
another woman might have felt; she knew no pique or 
spite. Her lover was in trouble, and her place was 
nigh him; so she flung a false maidenly modesty to the 
winds and acknowledged him and cheered him on, care- 
less of what the assembled world might think. 

She arrived at the Psychological Moment. 

''Probably! Probably!" she cried. ''Don't give up! 
Don't give up ! For my sake !" 



! THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER^ 15 

i For her sake! The words were like fire in the veins 

' of the struggling hero. He made another bursting ef- 

j fort, and gained a yard. But the rally had weakened 

I him; the next instant his head went under the water 

once more. Would it ever appear again? There 

was a long, long moment, while all mankind strangled 

and gasped in sympathetic unison, and then our hero's 

dripping head did emerge. It had hit a stone under 

water, and it was bleeding, but it emerged. One eye 

was nearly closed. 

"Watch him ! Watch him !" shouted Parrot Feathers. 
"Don't let him do that again ! When he has you under 
water he whacks your eye with his tail. He's trying 
to blind you!" 

And, indeed, these seemed to be the desperate oyster's 
tactics. If he could once destroy our hero's sight, the 
end would soon come. 

"Probably — do you hear me?" 
He nodded his head; he was beyond speech. 
"Take a long breath and dive! Do you get me? 
Dive ! Dive at your own feet ! Grab your feet in your 
hands and roll under water in a bunch! Roll toward 
the beach!" 

It was a desperate manoeuvre, especially for a man 
who had already been under water so much that morn- 
ing. But the situation was critical and called for the 
taking of big chances. It would either succeed — or 
fail. And death was no surer if it failed than if he 
waited. Probably Arboreal ceased to think; he yielded 
up his reasoning powers to the noble and courageous 



16 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

woman on the sand; he dived and grabbed his feet 1 
and rolled. 

"Again! Again!" she cried. "Another long breath 
and roll again!" i^ 

Her bosom heaved, as if she were actually breathing i 
for him. To Probably Arboreal, now all but drowned, 
and almost impervious to feeling, it also seemed as if 
he were breathing with her lungs; and yet he hardly, 
dared to dive and roll again. He struggled in the 
water and stared at her stupidly. 

She sent her unusual and electric personality thrilling 
into him across the intervening distance; she held him 
with her eyes, and filled him with her spirit. 

"Roll!" she commanded. "Probably! Roll!" 

And under the lash of her courage, he rolled again. 
Three more times he rolled . . . and then . . . 
unconscious, but still breathing, he was in her arms. 

As he reached the land half a million oysters sank 
into the sea in the silence of defeat and despair, while 
from the beaches rose a mighty shout. 

The sun, as if it gestured, flung the mists from its 
face, and beamed benignly. 

"Back! Back! Give him air!" cried Parrot Feath- 
ers, as she addressed herself to the task of removing the 
oyster from his foot. 

The giant beast was dying, and its jaws were locked 
in the rigour of its suffering. There was no way to re- 
move it gently. Parrot Feathers laid her unconscious 
hero's foot upon one rock, and broke the oyster loose 
with another. 



THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 17 

Incidentally she smashed Probably Arboreal's toe. 

He sat up in pained surprise. Unthinkingly, as you 
or I would put a hurt finger into our mouths, he put 
his crushed toe into his mouth. At that period of man's 
history the trick was not difficult. And then 

A beatific smile spread over his face! 

Man had tasted the oyster! 

In half an hour, mankind was plunging into the waves 
searching for oysters. The oyster's doom was sealed. 
His monstrous pretension that he belonged in the van 
of evolutionary progress was killed forever. He had 
been tasted, and found food. He would never again 
battle for supremacy. Meekly he yielded to his fate. 
He is food to this day. 

Parrot Feathers and Probably Arboreal were married 
after breakfast. On the toes of their first child were 
ten cunning, diminutive oyster shells. Mankind, up to 
that time, had had sharp toenails like the claws of 
birds. But the flat, shell-like toenails, the symbols 
of man's triumph over, and trampling down of, the 
oyster were inherited from the children of this happy 
couple. 

They persist to this day. 



''IF WE COULD ONLY SEE" 

I 

Lunch finished, Mr. Ferdinand Wimple, the poet, 
sullenly removed his coat and sulkily carried the dishes 
to the kitchen sink. He swore in a melodious murmur, 
as a cat purrs, as he turned the hot water on to the 
plates, and he splashed profanely with a wet dishcloth. 

"I'm going to do the dishes to-day, Ferd," announced 
his wife, pleasantly enough. She was a not unpleasant- 
looking woman; she gave the impression that she 
might, indeed, be a distinctly pleasant-looking woman, 
if she could avoid seeming hurried. She would have 
been a pretty woman, in fact, if she had been able 
to give the time to it. 

When she said that she would do the dishes herself, 
Mr. Wimple immediately let the dishcloth drop with- 
out another word, profane or otherwise, and began 
to dry his hands, preparatory to putting on his coat 
again. But she continued: 

"I want you to do the twins' wash.'' 

"What?" cried Mr. Wimple, outraged. He ran one 
of his plump hands through his thick tawny hair and 
stared at his wife with latent hatred in his brown eyes 

. . . those eyes of which so many women had 

i8 



i '7F WE COULD ONLY SEE" 19 

I remarked: "Aren't Mr. Wimple's eyes wonderful; just 
simply wonderful! So magnetic, if you get what I 
mean!" Mr. Wimple's head, by many of his female 
admirers, was spoken of as ''leonine.'' His detractors 
' — for who has them not? — dwelt rather upon the phys- 
ical reminder of Mr. Wimple, which was more sug- 
I gestive of the ox. 

"I said I wanted you to do the twins' wash for me," 
repeated Mrs. Wimple, awed neither by the lion's visage 
nor the bovine torso. Mrs. Wimple's own hair was 
red; and in a quietly red-haired sort of way she looked 
as if she expected her words to be heeded. 

"H !" said the poet, in a round baritone which 

enriched the ear as if a harpist had plucked the lovely 

string of G. ''H !" But there was more music 

than resolution in the sound. It floated somewhat 
tentatively upon the air. Mr. Wimple was not in re- 
volt. He was wondering if he had the courage to 
revolt. 

Mrs. Wimple lifted the cover of the laundry tub," 
which stood beside the sink, threw in the babies' 
"things," turned on the hot water, and said: 

"Better shave some laundry soap and throw it in, 
Ferd." 

"Heavens!" declared Mr. Wimple. "To expect a 
man of my temperament to do that!" But still he 
did not say that he would not do it. 

"Someone has to do it," contributed his wife. 

"I never kicked on the dishes, Nell," said Mr. Wimple. 
"But this, this is too much!" 



20 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

'i have been doing it for ten days, ever since the 
maid left. I'm feeling rotten to-day, and you can 
take a turn at it, Ferd. My back hurts." Still Mrs. 
Wimple was not unpleasant; but she was obviously 
determined. 

'Tour back!" sang Mr. Wimple, the minstrel, and 
shook his mane. 'Tour hack hurts you! My soul 
hurts me! How could I go direct from that — that 
damnable occupation — that most repulsive of domes- 
tic occupations — that bourgeois occupation — to Mrs. 
Watson's tea this afternoon and deliver my mes- 
sage?" 

A shimmer of heat (perhaps from her hair) suddenly 
dried up whatever dew of pleasantness remained in 
Mrs. Wimple's manner. 'They're just as much your 
twins as they are mine," she began . . . but just 
then one of them cried. 

A fraction of a second later the other one cried. 

Mrs. Wimple hurried from the kitchen and reached 
the living room in time to prevent mayhem. The twins, 
aged one \'ear, were painfully entangled with one an- 
other on the floor. The twin Ronald had conceived 
the idea that perhaps the twin Dugald's thumb was 
edible, and was testing five or six of his newly acquired 
teeth upon it. Childe Dugald had been inspired by 
his daemon with the notion that one of Childe Ronald's 
ears might be detachable, and was endeavouring to de- 
tach it. The situation was but too evidently distress- 
ing to both of them, but neither seemed capable of the 
mental initiative necessary to end it. Even when little 



"IF WE COULD ONLY SEE" 21 

Ronald opened his mouth to scream, little Dugald did 
not remove the thumb. 

Mrs. Wimple unscrambled them, wiped their noses, 
gave them rattles, rubber dolls, and goats to wreak 
themselves upon, and returned to the kitchen thinking 
(for she did not lack her humorous gleams) that the 
situation in the living room bore a certain resemblance 
to the situation in the kitchen. She and Ferdinand 
bit and scratched figuratively, but they had not the 
initiative to break loose from one another. 

Mr. Wimple was shaving soap into the laundry tub, 
but he stopped when she entered and sang at her: 
"And why did the maid leave?" 

"You know why she left, Ferd." 

"She left," chanted Ferdinand, poking the twins' cloth- 
ing viciously with a wooden paddle, "because . . ." 

But what Mr. Wimple said, and the way he said it, 
falls naturally into the freer sort of verse: 

"She left [sang Mr. Wimple] 

Because her discontent . . . 

Her individual discontent, 

Which is a part of the current general discontent 

Of all the labouring classes . . . 

Was constantly aggravated 

By your jarring personality, 

Mrs. Wimple! 

There is no harmony in this house, 

Mrs. Wimple; 

No harmony!" 



22 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER * 

Mrs. Wimple replied in sordid prose: 

"She left because she was offered more money else- ' 
where, and we couldn't afford to meet the difference." 

Something like a sob vibrated through Mr. Wimple's 
opulent voice as he rejoined: 

''Nellie, that is a blow that I did not look for! You 
have stabbed me with a poisoned weapon ! Yes, Nellie, 
I am poor! So was Edgar Poe. What the world calls 
poor! I shall, in all likelihood, never be rich . . . 
what the world calls rich. But I have my art ! I have 
my ideals ! I have my inner life ! I have my dreams ! 
Poor? Poor? Yes, Nell! Poor! So was Robert 
Burns! I am poor! I make no compromise with the 
mob. Nor shall I ever debase my gift for money. No ! 
Such as I am, I shall bear the torch that has been in- 
trusted to me till I fall fainting at the goal ! I have a 
message. To me it is precious stuff, and I shall not 
alloy it with the dross called gold. Poor? Yes, Nell! 
And you have the heart to cast it in my teeth! You, 
Nellie! You, from whom I once expected sympathy 
and understanding. You, whom I chose from all the 
world, and took into my life because 1 fancied that 
you, too, saw the vision ! Yes, Elinor, I dreamed that 
once!" 

II 

Mr. Wimple achieved pathos . . . almost trag- 
edy. To a trivial mind, however, the effect might have 
been somewhat spoiled by the fact that in his fervour 
he gesticulated wildly with the wooden paddle in one 



'7F WE COULD ONLY SEE' 23 

hand and an undergarment belonging to Ronald in the 
other. The truly sensitive soul would have seen these 
things as emphasizing his pathos. 

Mrs. Wimple, when Mr. Wimple became lyric in his 
utterance, often had the perverse impulse to answer 
him in a slangy vernacular which, if not actually coarse, 
was not, on the other hand, the dialect of the aesthete. 
For some months now, she had noticed, whenever Fer- 
dinand took out his soul and petted it verbally, she had 
had the desire to lacerate it with uncouth parts of 
speech. Ordinarily she frowned on slang; but when 
Ferdinand's soul leaped into the arena she found slang 
a weapon strangely facile to her clutch. 

"Coming down to brass tacks on this money thing, 
Ferdy," said Mrs. Wimple, "you're not the downy peach 
you picture in the ads. I'll tell the world you're not! 
You kid yourself, Ferdy. Some of your bloom has 
been removed, Ferdy. Don't go so far upstage when 
you speak to me about the dross the world calls gold. 
The reason we can't afford a maid now is because you 
got swell-headed and kicked over that perfectly good 
magazine job you used to have. You thought you were 
going to get more limelight and more money on the 
lecture platform. But you've been a flivver in the big 
time. Your message sounds better to a flock of women 
in somebody's sitting room full of shaded candles and 
samovars, with firelight on the antique junk, than it 
does in Carnegie Hall. You've got the voice for the 
big spaces all right, but the multitude doesn't get any 
loaves and fishes from you. Punk sticks and nuances 



24 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

— the intime stuff — that's your speed, Ferdy. I don't 
want to put any useless dents into your bean, but that 
message of yours has been hinted at by other messengers. 
I stick around home here and take care of the kids, 
and I've never let out a yell before. And you trot 
around to your soul fights and tea fests and feed your 
message to a bunch of dolled-up dames that don't even 
know you have a wife. I'm not jealous . . . you 
couldn't drag me into one of those perfumed literary 
dives by the hair . . . I got fed up with that stuff 
years ago. But as long as we're without a maid because 
you won't stick to a steady job, you'll do your share 
of the rough stuff around the house. I'll say you will! 
You used to be a good sport about that sort of thing, 
Ferdy, but it looks to me as if you were getting spoiled 
rotten. You've had a rush of soul to the mouth, Ferdy. 
Those talcum-powder seances of yours have gone to 
your head. You take those orgies of refinement too 
seriously. You begin to look to me like you had a 
streak of yellow in you, Ferdy . . . and if I ever 
see it so plain I'm sure of it, I'll leave you flat. I'll 
quit you, Ferdy, twins and all." 

"Quit, then!" cried Mr. Wimple. 

And then the harplike voice burst into song again, 
an offering rich with rage: 

"Woman! 

So help me all the gods, 

Fm through! 

Twins or no twins, 



"IF WE COULD ONLY SEE" 25 

Elinor Wimple, 

I'm through! 

By all the gods, 

I'll never wash another dish, 

Nor yet another set of vrnderwearT 



I And Mr. Wimple, in his heat, brought down the 
wooden paddle upon the pile of dishes in the sink, in 
front of his wife. The crash of the broken china seemed 
to augment his rage, rather than relieve it, and he raised 
the paddle for a second blow. 

"Ferd!" cried his wife, and caught at the stick. 

Mr. Wimple, the aesthete, grabbed her by the arm 
and strove to loosen her grasp upon the paddle. 

"You're bruising my arm!" she cried. But she did 
not release the stick. Neither did Ferdinand release 
her wrist. Perhaps he twisted it all the harder be- 
cause she struggled, and was not conscious that he 
was doing so . . . perhaps he twisted it harder 
quite consciously. At any rate, she suddenly swung 
upon him, with her free hand, and slapped him across 
the face with her wet dishcloth. 

At that they started apart, both more than a little 
appalled to realize that they had been engaged in some- 
thing resembling a fight. 

Without another word the bird of song withdrew to 
smooth his ruffled plumage. He dressed himself care- 
fully, and left the apartment without speaking to his 
wife again. He felt that he had not had altogether 
the best of the argument. There was no taste of soap 



26 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

in his mouth, for he had washed his lips and even • 
brushed his teeth . . . and yet, psychically, as he 
might have said himself, he still tasted that dishcloth. 
But he had not walked far before some of his com- 
placence returned. He removed his hat and ran his 
fingers through his interesting hair, and began to mur- 
mur lyrically: 

"By Jove! 

I have a way with women! 

There must he something of the Cave Man in me 

Yes, something of the primeval!" 

In his pocket was a little book of his own poems, 
bound in green and gold. As he had remarked to Mrs. 
Wimple, he was to deliver his message that afternoon. 

Ill 

Mrs. Watson's apartment (to which Ferdinand be- 
took himself after idling a couple of hours at his club) 
was toward the top of a tall building which overlooked 
great fields of city. It was but three blocks distant 
from Ferdinand's own humbler apartment, in uptown 
New York, but it was large, and . . . well, Mr. 
Wimple calculated, harbouring the sordid thought for 
an instant, that the rent must cost her seven or eight, 
thousand dollars a year. 

Mrs. Watson's life was delicately scented with an 
attar of expense. She would not drench her rooms or 
her existence with wealth, any more than she would 



"IF WE COULD ONLY SEE" 27 

spill perfume upon her garments with a careless hand. 
But the sensitive" nostrils of the aesthetic Mr. Wimple 
quivered in reaction to the aroma. For a person who 
despised gold, as Mr. Wimple professed to despise it, 
he was strangely unrepelled. Perhaps he thought it 
to be his spiritual duty to purify this atmosphere with 
his message. 

There were eighteen or twenty women there when 
Ferdinand arrived, and no man . . . except a weak- 
eyed captive husband or two, and an epicene creature 
with a violin, if you want to call them men. Ferdinand, 
with his bovine body and his leonine head, seemed al- 
most startlingly masculine in this assemblage, and felt 
so. His spirit, he had often confessed, was an instru- 
ment that vibrated best in unison with the subtle femi- 
nine soul; he felt it play upon him and woo him, with 
little winds that ran their fingers through his hair. 
These were women who had no occupation, and a num- 
ber of them had money; they felt delightfully cultivated 
when persons such as Ferdinand talked to them about 
the Soul. They warmed, they expanded, half uncon- 
sciously they projected those breaths and breezes which 
^thrilled our Ferdinand and wrought upon his mood. If 
a woman, idle and mature, cannot find romance any- 
I where else or anyhow other she will pick upon a preach- 
ler or an artist. 

I Mrs. Watson collected Ferdinands. Just how seri- 
jously she took them — how she regarded himself, spe- 
jcifically — Mr. Wimple could not be quite certain. 

"She is a woman of mystery," Mr. Wimple often 



28 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

murmured to himself. And he wondered a good deal 
about her . . . sometimes he wondered if she were 
not in love with him. 

He had once written to her a poem, which he en- 
titled "Mystery." She had let him see that she under- 
stood it, but she had not vouchsafed a solution of her- 
self. It might be possible, Ferdinand thought, that she 
did not love him . . . but she sympathized with 
him; she appreciated him; she had even fallen into a 
dreamy sadness one day, at the thought of how he must 
suffer from the disharmony in his home. For somehow, 
without much having been said by one or by the other, 
the knowledge had passed from Ferdinand to Mrs. 
Watson that there was not harmony in his home. She 
had understood. They had looked at each other, and 
she had understood. 

"Alethea!" he had murmured, under his breath. 
Alethea was her name. Me was sure she had heard it; 
but she had neither accepted it from him, nor rejected 
it. And he had gone away without quite daring to say 
it again in a louder tone. 

There was only one thing about her that sometimes 
jarred upon Mr. Wimple ... a sudden vein of 
levity. Sometimes Ferdinand, in his thoughts, even 
accused her of irony. And he was vaguely distrustful 
of a sense of the humorous in women; whether it took 
the form of a feeling for nonsense or a talent for sar- 
casm, it worried him. 

But she understood. She always understood . . . 
him and his message. 



"IF WE COULD ONLY SEE" 29 

And this afternoon she seemed to be understanding 
him, to be absorbing him and his message, with an in- 
creased sensitiveness. She regarded him with a new 
intentness, he thought; she was taking him with an 
expanded spiritual capacity. 

It was after the music, and what a creature overladen 
with "art jewelry" called *'the eats," harrowing Fer- 
dinand with the vulgar word, that he delivered his mes- 
sage, sitting not far from Mrs. Watson in the carefully 
graduated light. 

It was, upon the whole, a cheerful message, Ferdi- 
nand's. It was . . . succinctly . . . Love. 
Ferdinand was not pessimistic or cynical about Love. 
It was all around us, he thought, if we could only see 
it, could only feel it, could only open our beings for its 
reception. 

*'If we could only see into the hearts! If we could 
only see into the homes!" said Ferdinand. If we could 
only see, it was Ferdinand's belief, we should see Love 
there, unexpected treasures of Love, waiting dormant 
for the arousing touch; slumbering, as Endymion slum- 
bered, until Diana's kiss awakened him. 

"Mush!" muttered one of the captive husbands to the 
young violinist. But the young violinist scowled; he 
was in accord with Ferdinand. "Mush, slush, and 
gush!" whispered the first captive husband to the sec- 
ond captive husband. But captive husband number 
two only nodded and grinned in an idiotic way; he was 
lucky enough to be quite deaf, and no matter where 
his wife took him he could sit and think of his Lib- 



30 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

erty Bonds, without being bothered by the lion of the 
hour. . . . 

The world, Ferdinand went on, was trembling on the 
verge of a great spiritual awakening. The Millennium 
was about to stoop and kiss it, as Morning kissed the 
mountain tops. It was coming soon. Already the first 
faint streaks of the new dawn were in the orient sky 
. . . for eyes that could see them. Ah, if one could 
only see! In more and more bosoms, the world around, 
Love was becoming conscious of itself. Love was begin- 
ning to understand that there was love in other bosoms, 
too! At this point, at least a dozen bosoms, among 
those bosoms present, heaved with sighs. Heart was 
reaching out to Heart in a new confidence, Ferdinand 
said. One knew what was in one's own heart; but 
hitherto one had often been so blind that one did not 
realize that the same thing was in the hearts of one's 
fellows. Ah, if one could only see! 

Maeterlinck saw, Ferdinand said. 

''Ah, Maeterlinck!" whispered the bosoms. 

Yes, Maeterlinck saw, said Ferdinand. Nietzsche, 
said Ferdinand, had possessed a bosom full of yearning 
for all humanity, but he had been driven back upon 
himself and embittered by the world ... by the 
German world in which he lived, said Ferdinand. So 
Nietzsche's strength had little sweetness in it, and 
Nietzsche had not lived to see the new light in the orient 
sky. 

"Ah, Nietzsche!" moaned several sympathetic 
bosoms. 



"IF WE COULD ONLY SEE'' 31 

Bergson knew, Ferdinand opined. Several of the 
women present did not quite catch the connection be- 
tween Bergson and Ferdinand's message, but they as- 
sumed that everyone else caught it. Bergson's was a 
name they knew and . . . and in a moment Ferdi- 
nand was on more familiar ground again. Tagore 
knew, said Ferdinand. 

''Ah, Rabindranath Tagore!'' And the bosoms flut- 
tered as doves flutter when they coo and settle upon the 
eaves. Love! That was Ferdinand's message. And 
it appeared from the remarks with which he introduced 
and interspersed his own poems, that all the really 
brilliant men of the day were thinking in harmony 
with Ferdinand. He had the gift of introducing a cele- 
brated name every now and then in such a manner that 
these women, who were at least familiar with the names, 
actually felt that they were also familiar with the work 
for which the names stood. And, for his part, he was 
repaid, this afternoon, as he had never been repaid be- 
fore . . . never before had he been so wrought 
upon and electrically vivified as to-day by these ema- 
nations of the feminine soul; never before had he felt 
these little winds run their fmgers through his hair with 
such a caressing touch. Once or twice the poignancy of 
the sensation almost unsteadied him for an instant. 
And never before had Mrs. Watson regarded him with 
such singular intentness. 

Love! That was Ferdinand's message! And, ah! if 
one could only see! 

When the others were going, Mrs. Watson asked him 



32 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

to stay a while, and Ferdinand stayed. She led him to 
a little sitting room, high above the town, and stood by 
the window. And he stood beside her. 

"Your message this afternoon," she said, presently, 
"I enjoyed more than anything I have ever heard you 
say before. If we could only see! If we could only 



see 



Mrs. Watson lifted her blue eyes to him . . . 
and for an instant Ferdinand felt that she was more the 
woman of mystery than ever. For there lurked within 
the eyes an equivocal ripple of light; an unsteady glint 
that came and went. Had it not been for her words, 
Ferdinand might have feared that she was about to 
break into one of her disconcerting ebullitions of levity. 
But he perceived in her, at the same time, a certain 
tension, an unusual strain, and was reassured . . . 
she was a little strange, perhaps, because of his near 
presence. She was reacting to the magnetism which 
was flowing out of him in great waves, and she was 
striving to conceal from him her psychic excitement. 
That would account for any strangeness in her manner, 
any constraint. 

"If we could only see!" she repeated. 

"You always see," hazarded Ferdinand. 

"I sometimes see," said Mrs. Watson. "I have some- 
times seen more than it was intended for me to see." 

What could she mean by that? Ferdinand asked 
himself. And for an instant he was unpleasantly con- 
scious again of the something ambiguous in her mood. 
Suddenly she turned and switched on the electric light 



"IF WE COULD ONLY SEE" 33 

in the room, and then went and stood by the window 
again. Ferdinand's psychic feathers were a trifle 
rumpled by the action. It was growing dusk . . . 
but he would have liked to talk to her in the twilight, 
looking out over the roofs. 

''If we could only see into the hearts . . . into 
the homes/' she mused yet again. 

"If you could see into my heart now . . . Ale- 
thea . . ." 

He left the sentence unfinished. She did not look at 
him. She turned her face so he could not see it. 

He tried to take her hand. But she avoided that, 
without actually moving, without giving ground 
. . . as a boxer in the ring may escape the full effect 
of a blow he does not parry by shrugging it off, with- 
out retreating. 

After a moment's silence she said: 'Terdinand . . ." 
and paused. . . . 

He felt sure of her, then. He drew a long breath. 
He wished they were not standing by that window, 
framed in it, with the lighted room behind them . . . 
but since she would stand there . . . anyhow, now 
was the time. . . . 

And then he heard himself pleading with her, elo- 
quently, fervently. She was his ideal! She was 
. . . he hated the word ''affinity," because it had 
been cheapened and vulgarized by gross contacts 
. . . but she was his affinity. They were made for 
one another. It was predestined that they should meet 
and love. She was what he needed to complete him, to 



34 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

fulfill him. They would go forth together . . . not 
into the world, but away from it . . . they would 
dwell upon the heights, and . . . and . . . 
so forth. 

Ferdinand, as he pleaded, perhaps thought nothing 
consciously of the fact that she must be spending money 
at the rate of fifty or sixty thousand dollars a year. 
But, nevertheless, that subconscious mind of his, of 
which he had so often spoken, that subliminal self, 
must have been considering the figures, for suddenly 
there flashed before his inner eye the result of a mathe- 
matical calculation . . . fifty thousand dollars a 
year is the interest on one million dollars at five per 
cent. Ah, that would make his dreams possible! How 
his service to the human race might be increased in 
value if all his time could be but given to carrying his 
message! Farewell to the sordid struggle for bread! 
And in the poetic depths of him there moved, unuttered, 
a phrase which he had spoken aloud earlier in the day: 
'7 shall never wash another dish, nor yet another un- 
dergarment." This secondary line of thought, however, 
did not interfere with the lyric passion of his speech. 

"You are asking me to ... to .. . elope 
with you!'' 

She still drooped her head, but she let him feel her 
nearness. He wished — how he wished! — that they 
were away from that window. But he would not break 
the spell by suggesting that they move. Perhaps he 
could not reestablish it. 

"Elope?" Ferdinand critically considered the word. 



"IF WE COULD ONLY SEE" 35 

|"I want you to come away with me, Alethea, into Para- 
dise. I want you to help me rediscover Eden ! I want 
|you! I want you!'' 

"But . . . your family?" she murmured. 
j He had her hand again, and this time she let him 
keep it. 'That episode, that unfortunate and foolish 
episode, my marriage, is ended," said Ferdinand, as he 
i kissed her hand. 

j| "Ah! Ended?" said Mrs. Watson. "You are no 
I longer living with your wife? The marriage is dis- 
j solved?" Mrs. Watson's own marriage had been dis- 
I solved for some time; whether by death or by divorce 
! Ferdinand had never taken the trouble to inquire. 

"In the spiritual sense — and that is all that counts — 
dissolved," said Ferdinand. And he could not help 
adding: "To-day." 

' Mrs. Watson was breathing quickly . . . and 
suddenly she turned and put her head on his shoulder. 
And yet even as Ferdinand's mind cried "Victory!" he 
was aware of a strange doubt ; for when he attempted to 
take her in his arms, she put up her hands and prevented 
a real embrace. He stood in perplexity. He felt that 
she was shaking with emotion ; he heard muffled sounds 
. . . she was sobbing and weeping on his shoulder, 
or . . . 

No! It could not be! Yes, the woman was laugh- 
ing! Joy? Hysteria? What? 

Suddenly she pushed him away from her, and faced 
him, controlling her laughter. 

"Excuse me," said Mrs. Watson, with the levity he 



36 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

had feared dancing in her eyes, "but such a silly idea 
occurred to me just as I was about to tell you that 
1 would elope with you ... it occurred to me that 
I had better tell you that all my money is tied up in a 
trust fund. I can never touch anything but the in- 
terest, you know." 

"Alethea," said Ferdinand, chokingly, "such a 
thought at a time like this is unworthy of both of us!" 
And he advanced toward her again. But she stopped 
him. 

"Just a moment, Ferdinand! I haven't told you all 
of my silly idea! I wondered also, you know, whether, 
if we ever got hard up and had to do our own work, 
you would break my dishes with a wooden stick and 
twist my arm until I howled!" 

As Ferdinand slowly took in her words, he felt a 
sudden recession of vitality. He said nothing, but his 
knees felt weak, and he sat down on a chair. 

"Get up!" said Mrs. Watson, with a cold little silver 
tinkle of a laugh. "I didn't ask you to sit down!" 

Ferdinand got up. 

"I don't spy on my neighbours as a rule," continued 
Mrs. Watson, "but a little after noon to-day I happened 
to be standing by this window looking out over the 
town, and this pair of opera glasses happened to be on 
the table there and . . . well, take them, you oaf! 
You fat fool! And look at that window, down there! 
It's your own kitchen window!" 

Ferdinand took them and looked ... he was 
crushed and speechless, and he obeyed mechanically. 



'7F WE COULD ONLY SEF' 37 

JHe dropped the glasses with a gasp. He had not only 
seen into his own kitchen window, lighted as this one 
was, but he had seen Nell there . . . and, as per- 
verse fate would have it, some whim had inspired Nell 
J to take her own opera glasses and look out over the 
city. She was standing there with them now. Had 
|!she seen him a moment before, with Mrs. Watson's 
head upon his shoulder? 
|! He started out. « 

I "Wait a moment," said Mrs. Watson. Ferdinand 
istopped. He still seemed oddly without volition. It 
reminded him of what he had heard about certain men 
suffering from shell shock. 

"There ... I wanted to do that before you 
went," said Mrs. Watson, and slapped him across the 
face. And Ferdinand's soul registered once more the 
flavour of a damp dishcloth. "It's the second time a 
woman has slapped you to-day," said Mrs. Watson. 
"Try and finish the rest of the day without getting a 
third one. You can go now." 

Ferdinand went. He reached the street, and walked 
several blocks in silence. Neither his voice nor his as- 
surance seemed to be inclined to return to him speedily. 
His voice came back first, with a little of his compla- 
cence, after fifteen or twenty minutes. And: 

"Hell!" said Ferdinand, in his rich, harplike voice, 
running his fingers through his tawny hair. "Hell!" 



HOW HANK SIGNED THE PLEDGE 

AUTHOR'S NOTE — Another version of this story appeared in a book entitled 
"Danny's Own Story," published in 1912 by Doubleday, Page & Co. 

I'm not so sure about Prohibition and pledges and 
such things holding back a man that has got the liquor 
idea in his head. If meanness is in a man, it usually 
stays in him, in spite of all the pledges he signs and 
the promises he makes. 

About the meanest man I ever knew was Hank 
Walters, a blacksmith in a little town in Illinois, the 
meanest and the whiskey-drinkingest. And I had a 
chance to know him well, for he and his wife Elmira 
brought me up. Somebody left me on their doorstep in 
a basket when I was a baby, and they took me in and 
raised me. I reckon they took me in so they could 
quarrel about me. They'd lived together a good many 
years and quarrelled about everything else under the 
sun, and were running out of topics to row over. A 
new topic of dissension sort of briskened things up for a 
while. 

Not having any kids of his own to lick, Hank lam- 
basted me when he was drunk and whaled me when he 
was sober. It was a change from licking his wife, 1 
suppose. A man like Hank has just naturally got to 
have something he can cuss around and boss, so as to 

38 



HOW HANK SIGNED THE PLEDGE 39 

keep himself from finding out he don't amount to any- 
thing . . . although he must have known he 
didn't, too, way down deep in his inmost gizzards. 

So I was unhappy when I was a kid, but not knowing 
anything else I never found out exactly how unhappy 
I was. There were worse places to live in than that 
little town, and there was one thing in our house that 
I always admired when I was a kid. That was a big 
cistern. Most people had their cisterns outside their 
houses, but ours was right in under our kitchen floor, 
and there was a trap door with leather hinges opened 
into it right by the kitchen stove. But that wasn't why 
I was so proud of it. It was because the cistern was 
full of fish — bullheads and redhorse and sunfish and 
pickerel. 

Hank's father built the cistern. And one time he 
brought home some live fish in a bucket and dumped 
them in there. And they grew. And multiplied and 
refurnished the earth, as the Good Book says. That 
cistern full of fish had got to be a family custom. 
It was a comfort to Hank, for all the Walterses were 
great fish eaters, though it never went to brains any. 
We fed 'em now and then, and threw the little ones back 
in until they were grown, and kept the dead ones picked 
out as soon as we smelled anything wrong, and it never 
hurt the water any; and when I was a kid I wouldn't 
have taken anything for living in a house like that. 

One time when I was a kid about six years old Hank 
came home drunk from Bill Nolan's barroom, and got 
to chasing Elmira's cat, because he said it was making 



40 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

. i 
faces at him. The cistern door was open, and Hank 

fell in. Elmira wasn't at home, and I was scared. 

Elmira had always told me not to fool around that 

cistern door any when I was a kid, for if I fell in there, 

she said, I'd be a corpse, quicker'n scatt. 

So when Hank fell in and I heard him splash, being 
such a little fellow and awful scared because Elmira 
had always made it so strong, I supposed that Hank was j 
probably a corpse already. I slammed the door shut' 
over the cistern without looking in, for I heard Hank 
flopping around down there. I hadn't ever heard a 
corpse flop before and didn't know but what it might 
be somehow injurious to me, and I wasn't going to take 
any chances. 

I went out and played in the front yard and waited 
for Elmira. But I couldn't seem to get my mind settled 
on playing I was a horse, or anything. I kept think- 
ing of Hank being a corpse down in that cistern. And 
maybe that corpse is going to come flopping out pretty 
soon, I thought to myself, and lick me in some new 
and unusual way. I hadn't ever been licked by a 
corpse. Being young and innocent, I didn't rightly 
know what a corpse is, except I had the idea there was 
something about a corpse that kept them from being 
popular. 

So after a while I sneaked back into the house and set 
all the flatirons on top of the cistern lid. I heard some 
flopping and splashing and fluttering, as if that corpse 
was trying to jump up and was falling back into the 
water, and I heard Hank's voice, and got scareder and 



HOW HANK SIGNED THE PLEDGE 41 



iscareder. When Elmira came along down the road she 
isaw me by the gate crying and blubbering, and she 
asked me why. 

"Hank is a corpse!" says I. 

I "A corpse!" says Elmira, dropping the pound of 
i coffee she was carrying home from the general store 
jand post-office. "Danny, what do you mean?" 

I saw then I was to blame somehow, and I wished I 
hadn't said anything about Hank being a corpse. And 

I I made up my mind I wouldn't say anything more. So 
(when she grabbed hold of me and asked me again what 
( I meant I blubbered harder, as a kid will, and said 

nothing. I wished I hadn't set those flatirons on the 
cistern lid, for it came to me all at once that even if 
Hank had turned into a corpse I hadn't any right to 
keep him in the cistern. 

I Just then old Mis' Rogers, one of our neighbours, 
came by, while Elmira was shaking me and yelling at 
me and asking how it happened, and had I seen it, and 
where was Hank's corpse. 

"What's Danny been doing now?" asked Mis' Rogers 
— me being always up to something. 

Elmira turned and saw her and gave a whoop and 
hollered out: "Hank is dead!" And she threw her 
apron over her head and sat right down in the path and 
boo-hooed like a baby. And I bellered and howled all 
the louder. 

Mis' Rogers, she never waited to ask anything more. 
She saw she had a piece of news, and she wanted to be 
the first to spread it. She ran right across the road to 



42 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

where the Alexanderses lived. Mis' Alexander, she saw 
her coming and unhooked the screen door and Mis' 
Rogers hollered out before she reached the porch: 
"Hank Walters is dead!" 

And then she went footing it up the street. There 
was a black plume on her bonnet, nodding the same as 
on a hearse, and she was into and out of seven front 
yards in less than five minutes. 

Mis' Alexander she ran across the road to where we 
were, and kneeled down and put her arm around 
Elmira, who was still rocking back and forth in the 
path, and she said: 

"How do you know he's dead, Elmira? I saw him 
not more than an hour ago." 

"Danny saw it all," says Elmira. 

Mis' Alexander turned to me and wanted to know 
what happened and how it happened and where it hap- 
pened. But I didn't want to say anything about that 
cistern. So I busted out crying all over again and I 
said: "He was drunk and he came home drunk and he 
did it then, and that's how he did it." 

"And you saw him?" she asked. 

I nodded. 

"Where is he?" says she and Elmira, both together. 

But I was scared to say anything about that cistern, 
so I just bawled some more. 

"Was it in the blacksmith shop?" asks Mis' Alex- 
ander. 

I nodded my head again, and let it go at that. 

"Is he in there now?" she wants to know. 



HOW HANK SIGNED THE PLEDGE 43 

I nodded again. I hadn't meant to give out any un- 
true stories. But a kid will always lie, not meaning 
particular to lie, if you sort of invite him with ques- 
tions like that, and get him scared by the way you're 
acting. Besides, I says to myself, so long as Hank has 
turned into a corpse, and being a corpse makes him 
dead, what's the difference whether he's in the black- 
smith shop or in the cistern? I hadn't had any plain 
idea before that being a corpse meant the same thing as 
being dead. And I wasn't any too sure what being 
dead was like, either. Except I knew they had funerals 
over you then. I knew being a corpse must be a dis- 
advantage from the way that Elmira has always said 
to keep away from that cistern, or I'd be one. And 
I began to see the whole thing was more important even 
than I had figured it was at first. I wondered if there'd 
be a funeral at our house. If there was one, that would 
be fine. They didn't have them every day in our town, 
and we hadn't ever had one of our own. 

Mis' Alexander, she led Elmira into the house, both 
a-crying, and Mis' Alexander trying to comfort her, and 
me a-tagging along behind holding on to Elmira's skirts 
and sniffling into them. And in a few minutes all 
those women that Mis' Rogers had told came filing 
into the house, one at a time, looking sad and mourn- 
ful. Only old Mis' Primrose, she was a little late get- 
ting there, because she stopped to put on the dress she 
always wore to funerals, with the black Paris lace on to 
it that her cousin Arminty White had sent her from 
Chicago. 



44 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 



I 



When they found out that Hank had come home with^ 
liquor in him and done it himself they were all excited , 
and they all crowded around and asked me questions, 
except two that were holding Elmira's hands where she 
sat moaning in a chair. And those questions scared | 
me and egged me on to lies I hadn't had any idea of { 
telling. I 

Says one woman: "Danny, you saw him do it in : 
the blacksmith shop?" 

I nodded. 

"But how did he get in?" says another one. "The door 
was locked on the outside with a padlock just now 
when I came by. He couldn't have killed himself in 
there and then locked the door on the outside." 

I didn't see how he could have done that myself, so 
I began to bawl again and said nothing at all. 

"He must have crawled into the shop through that 
little side window," says Mis' Primrose. "That win- 
dow was open when I came by, even if the door was 
locked. Did you see him crawl through the little 
side window, Danny?" 

I nodded. There wasn't anything else I could think 
of to do. 

"But you aren't tall enough to look through that 
window," sings out Mis' Rogers. "How could you see 
into the shop, Danny?" 

I didn't know, so I didn't say anything at all; I just 
sniffled. 

"There's a store box right in under the window," 
says another one. "Danny must have climbed on to 



HOW HANK SIGNED THE PLEDGE 45 

that store box and looked in after he saw Hank crawl 
through the window. Did you scramble on to the store 
box and look in, Danny?" 

I just nodded again. 

"And what was it you saw him do? How did he 
kill himself?'' they all asked together. 

I didn't know. So I just bellered and boo-hooed 
some more. Things were getting past anything I could 
see the way out of. 

"He might have hung himself to one of the iron rings 
in the joists above the forge," says another woman. 

"He climbed on to the forge and tied the rope to one 
of those rings, and tied the other end around his neck, 
and then he stepped off the forge and swung. Was 
that how he did it, Danny?" 

I nodded. And I bellered louder than ever. I knew 
that Hank was down in that cistern below the kitchen, 
a corpse and a mighty wet corpse, all this time; but 
those women kind of got me to thinking he was hang- 
ing out in the blacksmith shop by the forge, too. 

Pretty soon one woman says, shivery: "I wouldn't 
want to have the job of opening the door of the black- 
smith shop the first one!" 

And they all shivered, and looked at Elmira, and says 
to let some of the men open that door. And Mis' Al- 
exander says she'll run and get her husband and make 
him do it. And all the time Elmira sits moaning in 
that chair. One woman says Elmira ought to have a 
cup of tea, and she'll lay off her bonnet and go to the 
kitchen and make it for her. But Elmira says no, she 



46 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

can't a-bear to think of tea, with poor Hennery hang- 
ing out there in the shop. But she was kind of enjoy- 
ing all that fuss being made over her, too. And all 
the other women said: "Poor thing!" But most of 
them were mad because she said she didn't want any 
tea, for they wanted some and didn't feel free to take 
it without she took some. They coaxed her and made 
her see that it was her duty, and she said she'd have 
some finally. 

So they all went out to the kitchen, taking along some 
of the best room chairs, Elmira coming, too, and me 
tagging along. The first thing they noticed was those 
flatirons on top of the cistern lid. Mis' Primrose says 
that looks funny. But Mis' Rogers says Danny must 
have been playing with them. "Were you playing 
they were horses, Danny?" 

I was feeling considerable like a liar by this time, 
but I nodded. I couldn't see any use hurrying things 
up. I was bound to get a licking pretty soon anyhow. 
I could always bet on that. So they picked up the 
flatirons, and as they picked them up there came a 
splashing noise in the cistern. I thought to myself 
that Hank's corpse would be out of there in a minute, 
and then I'd catch it. One woman says: "Sakes alive! 
What's that noise?" 

Elmira says the cistern is full of fish and it must 
be some of the biggest ones flopping around. If they 
hadn't been worked up and excited and talking all to- 
gether and thinking of Hank hanging out in the black- 
smith shop they might have suspicioned something, 



HOW HANK SIGNED THE PLEDGE 47 

for that flopping and splashing kept up steady. Maybe 
I should have mentioned sooner it had been a dry sum- 
mer and there was only three or four feet of water in the 
cistern and Hank wasn't in scarcely up to his big hairy 
chest. When Elmira says the cistern is full of fish 
that woman opens the trap door and looks in. Hank 
thinks it's Elmira come to get him out, he says after- 
ward. And he allows he'll keep quiet in there and 
make believe he is drowned and give her a good scare 
and make her feel sorry for him. 

But when the cistern door was opened he heard a 
lot of clacking tongues like a hen convention, and he 
allowed she had told the neighbours, and he'd scare 
them, too. So he laid low. And the woman that 
looked in, she sees nothing, for it's as dark down there 
as the insides of the whale that swallowed Jonah. But 
she left the door open and went on making tea, and 
there wasn't scarcely a sound from that cistern, only 
little ripply noises like it might have been fish. 

Pretty soon Mis' Rogers says: 

"It has drawed, Elmira; won't you have a cup?" 

Elmira kicked some more, but she took hers. And 
each woman took hers. And one woman, a-sipping 
of hers, she says: 

'The departed had his good points, Elmira." 

Which was the best thing had been said of Hank in 
that town for years and years. 

Old Mis' Primrose, she always prided herself on being 
honest, no matter what come of it, and she ups and says: 

*i don't believe in any hypocritics at a time like 



48 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

this, any more'n any other time. The departed wasn't 
any good, and the whole town knows it, and Elmira 
ought to feel like it's good riddance of bad rubbish, 
and such is my sentiments and the sentiments of truth 
and righteousness." 

All the other women sings out: "Wy, Mis' Primrose, 
I never!" But down in underneath more of 'em agreed 
than let on to. Elmira she wiped her eyes and says: 

"Hennery and me had our troubles, there ain't any 
use denying that, Mis' Primrose. It has often been 
give and take between us and betwixt us. And the 
whole town knows he has lifted his hand against me 
more'n once. But I always stood up to Hennery and 
I fit him back, free and fair and open. I give him as 
good as he sent on this earth and I ain't the one to 
carry a mad beyond the grave. I forgive Hennery 
all the orneriness he did to me, and there was a lot of 
it, as is becoming to a church member, which he never 
was." 

All the women but Mis' Primrose says: "Elmira, 
you have got a Christian sperrit!" Which did her a 
heap of good, and she cried considerable harder, leak- 
ing out tears as fast as she poured tea in. And each one 
present tried to think up something nice to say about 
Hank, only there wasn't much they could say. And 
Hank in that cistern, listening to every word of it. 

Mis' Rogers, she says: "Before he took to drinking 
like a fish. Hank Walters was as likely a lookin' young 
feller as ever I see." 

Mis' White, she says: "Well, Hank he never was 



HOW HANK SIGNED THE PLEDGE 49 

a stingy man, anyhow. Often and often White has 
told me about seeing Hank treating the crowd down 
in Nolan's saloon just as come-easy, go-easy as if it 
wasn't money he'd ought to have paid his honest debts 
with." 

They sat there that way telling of what good points 
they could think of for ten minutes, and Hank hear- 
ing it and getting madder and madder all the time. 
By and by Tom Alexander came busting into the 
house. 

"What's the matter with all you women?'' he says. 
"There's nobody hanging in that blacksmith shop. I 
broke the door down and went in, and it's empty." 

There was a pretty howdy-do, then, and they all sing 
out: 

"Where's the corpse?" 

Some thinks maybe someone has cut it down and 
taken it away, and all gabbled at once. But for a 
minute or two no one thought that maybe little Danny 
had been egged on to tell lies. And little Danny ain't 
saying a word. But Elmira grabbed me and shook 
me and said: 

"You little liar, what do you mean by that story of 
yours?" 

I thought that licking was about due then. But 
whilst all eyes were turned on me and Elmira, there 
came a voice from the cistern. It was Hank's voice, 
but it sounded queer and hollow, and it said: 

"Tom Alexander, is that you?" 

Some of the women screamed, for they thought it 



50 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

was Hank's ghost. But Mis' Primrose says: "What 
would a ghost be doing in a cistern?" 

Tom Alexander laughed and yelled down into the 
cistern: "What in blazes you want to jump in there 
for, Hank?" 

"You darned ijut!" said Hank, "you quit mocking 
me and get a ladder, and when I get out'n here I'll 
learn you to ask me what I wanted to jump in here for!" 

"You never saw the day you could do it," says Tom 
Alexander, meaning the day Hank could lick him. "And 
if you feel that way about it you can stay down there, 
for all of me. I guess a little water won't hurt you 
any, for a change." And he left the house. 

"Elmira," sings out Hank, mad and bossy, "you go 
get me a ladder!" 

But Elmira, her temper rose up, too, all of a sudden. 

"Don't you dare order me around like I was the dirt 
under your feet, Hennery Walters," she says. 

Hank fairly roared, he was so mad. "When I get 
out'n here," he shouted, "I'll give you what you won't 
forget in a hurry! I heard you a-forgivin' me and 
a-weepin' over me! And I won't be forgive nor weeped 
over by no one! You go and get that ladder!" 

But Elmira only answered: "You was drunk when 
you fell in there. Hank Walters. And you can stay in 
there till you get a better temper on to you." And all 
the women laughed and said: "That's right, Elmira! 
Spunk up to him!" 

There was considerable splashing around in the water 
for a couple of minutes. And then, of a sudden, a 



HOW HANK SIGNED THE PLEDGE 51 

live fish came a-whirling out of that hole in the floor, 
which he catched with his hands. It was a big bull- 
head, and its whiskers around its mouth was stiffened 
into spikes, and it landed kerplump on to Mis' Rogers' 
lap, a-wiggling, and it horned her on the hands. She 
was that surprised she fainted. Mis' Primrose, she got 
up and licked the fish back into the cistern and said, 
right decided: 

"Elmira Walters, if you let Hank out of that cistern 
before he's signed the pledge and promised to jine the 
church, you're a bigger fool than I take you for. A 
woman has got to make a stand!" 

And all the women sing out: ''Send for Brother Cart- 
wright! Send for Brother Cartwright!" 

And they sent me scooting down the street to get 
him quick. He was the preacher. I never stopped 
to tell but two or three people on the way to his house, 
but they must have spread the news quick, for when 
I got back with him it looked like the whole town 
was at our house. 

It was along about dusk by this time, and it was a 
prayer meeting night at the church. Mr. Cartwright 
told his wife to tell the folks that came to the prayer 
meeting he'd be back before long, and to wait for him. 
But she really told them where he'd gone, and what for. 

Mr. Cartwright marched right into our kitchen. All 
the chairs in the house was in there, and the women 
were talking and laughing, and they had sent to the 
Alexanderses for their chairs, and to the Rogerses for 
theirs. Every once in a while there would be an awful 



52 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

burst of language come rolling up from the hole where 
that unregenerate old sinner was cooped up. 

I have travelled around considerable since those days, 
and I have mixed up along with many kinds of people 
in many different places, and some of them were cussers 
to admire. But I never heard such cussing before or 
since as old Hank did that night. He busted his own 
records and he rose higher than his own water marks 
for previous years. I wasn't anything but a little kid 
then, not fit to admire the full beauty of it. They were 
deep down cusses that came from the heart. Looking 
back at it after these years, I can well believe what 
Brother Cartwright said himself that night — that it 
wasn't natural cussing, and that some higher power, 
like a demon or an evil sperrit, must have entered into 
Hank's human carcase and given that terrible eloquence 
to his remarks. It busted out every few minutes, and 
the women would put their fingers into their ears until 
a spell was over. And it was personal, too. Hank 
would listen till he heard a woman's voice he knew, 
and then he would let loose on her family, going back 
to her grandfathers and working downward to her 
children's children. 

Brother Cartwright steps up to the hole in the floor 
and says gentle and soothing like an undertaker when 
he tells you where to sit at a home funeral: 

"Brother Walters! Oh, Brother Walters!" 

"Brother!" yelled Hank, "don't ye brother me, you 
snifflin', psalm-singin', yaller-faced, pigeon-toed hyp- 
percrit, you! Get me a ladder, gol dern ye, and I'll 



HOW HANK SIGNED THE PLEDGE 53 

imount out o'here and learn ye to brother me, I will!'' 
Only that wasn't anything to what Hank really said; 
jno more like than a little yellow fluffy canary is like a 
I turkey buzzard. 

! "Brother Walters," said the preacher, calm but firm, 
'we have all decided that you aren't going to get out 
ijof that cistern until you sign the pledge." 

Then Hank told him what he thought of him and 
[pledges and church doings, and it wasn't pretty. He 
said if he was as deep in the eternal fire of hell as he 
I was in rain water, and every fish that nibbled at his toes 
was a devil with a red-hot pitchfork sicked on by a 
preacher, they could jab at him until the whole hereafter 
turned into icicles before he'd sign anything that a man 
like Mr. Cartwright gave him to sign. Hank was 
stubborner than any mule he ever nailed shoes on to, 
and proud of being that stubborn. That town was 
a most awful religious town, and Hank knew he was 
called the most unreligious man in it, and he was proud 
of that, too; and if any one called him a heathen it just 
plumb tickled him all over. 

"Brother Walters," says the preacher, "we are going 
to pray for you." 

And they did it. They brought all the chairs close 
up around the cistern door, in a ring, and they all 
knelt down there with their heads on the chairs and 
prayed for Hank's salvation. They did it up in style, 
too, one at a time, and the others singing out, "Amen!" 
every now and then, and they shed tears down on to 
Hank. 



54 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

The front yard was crowded with men, all laughing 
and talking and chawing and spitting tobacco, and 
betting how long Hank would hold out. Si Emery, 
that was the city marshal, and always wore a big nickel- 
plated star, was out there with them. Si was in a 
sweat, because Bill Nolan, who ran the saloon, and some 
more of Hank's friends were out by the front fence 
trying to get Si to arrest the preacher. For they said 
that Hank was being gradually murdered in that water 
and would die if he was held there too long, and it 
would be a crime. Only they didn't come into the 
house amongst us religious folks to say it. But Si, j 
he says he don't dare to arrest anybody, because Hank's j 
house is just outside the village corporation line; he's , 
considerable worried about what his duty is, not lik- ^ 
ing to displease Bill Nolan. 

Pretty soon the gang that Mrs. Cartwright had 
rounded up at the prayer meeting came stringing along 
in. They had brought their hymn books with them, 
and they sung. The whole town was there then, and 
they all sung. They sung revival hymns over Hank. 
And Hank, he would just cuss and cuss. Every time 
he busted out into another cussing spell they would 
start another hymn. Finally the men out in the front 
yard began to warm up and sing, too, all but No- 
lan's crowd, and they gave Hank up for lost and went 
back to the barroom. 

The first thing they knew they had a regular old- 
fashioned revival meeting going there, and that 
preacher was preaching a regular revival sermon. I've 



HOW HANK SIGNED THE PLEDGE 55 

^ibeen to more than one camp meeting, but for just 
^naturally taking hold of the whole human race by the 
slack of the pants and dangling of it over hell fire, I 
',never heard that sermon equalled. Two or three old 
''backsliders in the crowd came right up and repented 
all over again. The whole kit-and-biling of them got 
■the power, good and hard, and sung and shouted till 
the joints of the house cracked and it shook and swayed 
on its foundations. But Hank, he only cussed. He 
was obstinate. Hank was, and his pride and dander 
had risen up. 

''Darn your ornery religious hides," he says, "you're 
takin' a low-down advantage of me, you are! Let me 
out on to dry land, and I'll show you who'll stick it out 
the longest, I will!" 

Most of the folks there hadn't had any suppers, so 
after all the sinners but Hank had either got con- 
verted or sneaked away, some of the women said why 
not make a kind of a love feast of it, and bring some 
victuals, like they do at church sociables. Because 
it seemed that Satan was going to wrestle there all 
night, like he did with the angel Jacob, and they ought 
to be prepared. So they did it. They went and they 
came back with things to eat and they made hot coffee 
and they feasted that preacher and themselves and 
Elmira and me, right in Hank's hearing. 

And Hank was getting pretty hungry himself. And 
he was cold in that water. And the fish were nibbling 
at him. And he was getting cussed out and weak and 
soaked full of despair. There wasn't any way for him 



n 



56 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 



to sit down and rest. He was scared of getting cramps 
in his legs and sinking down with his head under water ■. 
and being drowned. ] 

He said afterward he would have done the last with j 
pleasure if there had been any way of starting a law- ^ 
suit for murder against that gang. So along between , 
ten and eleven o'clock that night he sings out : 

"I give in, gosh dern ye, I give in! Let me out and ^ 
I'll sign your pesky pledge!" 

Brother Cartwright was for getting a ladder and 
letting him climb out right away. But Elmira said: 

"You don't know him like I do! If he gets out be- 
fore he's signed the pledge, he'll never do it." 

So Brother Cartwright wrote out a pledge on the in- 
side leaf of the Bible, and tied it on to a string, and a 
pencil on to another string, and let them down, and held 
a lantern down, too, and Hank made his mark, for he 
couldn't write. But just as Hank was making his 
mark that preacher spoke some words over Hank, and 
then he said: 

"Now, Henry Walters, I have baptized you, and you 
are a member of the church." 

You might have thought that Hank would have 
broken out into profanity again at that, for he hadn't 
agreed to anything but signing the pledge. But he 
didn't cuss. When they got the ladder and he climbed 
up into the kitchen, shivering and dripping, he said 
serious and solemn to Mr. Cartwright: 

"Did I hear you baptizing me in that water?" 

Mr. Cartwright said he had. 



HOW HANK SIGNED THE PLEDGE 57 

"That was a low-down trick," said Hank. "You 
knowed I always made my brags that I'd never jined 
a church and never would. You knowed I was proud 
of that. You knowed it was my glory to tell it, and 
that I set a heap of store by it, in every way. And 
now youVe gone and took that away from me! You've 
gone and jined me to the church! You never fought it 
out fair and square, man strivin' to outlast man, like 
we done with the pledge, but you sneaked it on to me 
when I wasn't lookin'!" 

And Hank always thought he had been baptized 
binding and regular. And he sorrowed and grieved 
over it, and got grouchier and meaner and drunkener. 
No pledge nor no Prohibition could hold Hank. He 
was a worse man in every way after that night in the 
cistern, and took to licking me harder and harder. 



ACCURSED HAT! 

1 REQUEST of you 3. razor, and you present me with 
this implement! A safety razor! One cannot gash 
oneself with your invention. Do you think I rush to r 
your apartment with the desire to barber myself ? No, 
milles diahles, no! I 'ave embrace you for my friend, \ 
and you mock at my despair. This tool may safely 
abolish the 'air from the lip of the drummer when the i 
train 'ave to wiggle, but it will not gash the jugular; 
it will not release the bluest blood of France that 
courses through one's veins. 

Oui, I will restrain myself. I will 'ave a drink. 
Mercil I will make myself of a calmness. I will ex- 
plain. 

Yes, it is a woman. What else? At the insides of 
all despair it is a woman ever. That is always the — 
the — w'at you call 'im? — the one best bet. 

Listen. I love 'er. She own the 'ouse of which I 
am one of the lodgers, in'abiting the chamber beneath 
the skylight. She is a widow, and I love 'er. Of such 
a roundness is she! — and she 'ave the restaurant be- 
yond the street. Of such a beauty! — and 'er 'usband, 
who was a Monsieur Flanagan, 'e leave 'er w'at you call 
well fix with life-insurance. So well fix, so large, so 
brilliant of the complexion, so merry of the smile, so 

58 



ACCURSED HAT! 59 

competent of the menage, of such a plumpness! 'Ow 
should it be that one did not love 'er? 

But she? Does she smile on the 'andsome French- 
man who in'abit 'er skylight chamber and paint and 
paint and paint all day long, and sell, oh, so little of 
'is paintings? Helasl She scarcely know that 'e ex- 
ist! She 'ave scarcely notice 'im. 'Ow is genius of 
avail? Wat is wit, w'at is gallantry, w'at is manner 
— w'at is all these things w'en one does not possess the — 
the — w'at you call 'im? — the front? Helasl I love, 
but I 'ave not the front! My trousers are all of a 
fringe at the bottom, and my collars are all of a frows- 
iness at the top. My sleeves are of such a shine! And 
my 'at 

Ten thousand curses for the man that invented 'ats! 
You are my friend — 'ave you a pistol? Yes, I will be 
calm. I will 'ave a drink. I will restrain myself. 
Merci, monsieur. 

My sleeves are of a sleekness; and my 'at My 'at, 

1 look at 'im. 'E is — w'at you call 'im? — on the boom! 
I contemplate 'im sadly. I regard 'im with reproach. 
'E is ridiculous. 'E look like 'e been kicked. With 
such a 'at, who can enact the lover? With such a 'at, 
who can win 'imself a widow? I fly into a rage. I 
tear from my 'air. I shake my fist at the nose of fate. 
I become terrible. I dash my 'at upon the floor, and 
jump upon 'im with fury. Then I look at 'im with 
'atred. 'E look back at me with sorrow in 'is wrinkles. 
And, Voild! — as I look at 'im I 'ave a thought. The 
'at, 'e straighten out from my jump. W'en my feet is 



60 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

off, 'e rise a little way from 'is wrinkles where I crush 
'im. 'E lift 'imself slowly like a jack-in-the-box up 
from 'is disgrace. And I 'ave an idea. 

Monsieur, we Frenchmen are a people of resource!^ 
I take my thought to an agent of the advertising' 
profession. I say I 'ave come to the place where I am 
willing to degrade my genius for gold. I wish to eat 
more often. I wish to marry the widow I love. I will - 
forget my art; I will make some dollars; I will degrade ' 
myself temporarily. The agent of advertising 'e say 
'e 'ave no need of any degradation, to take 'im some- 
where else. But I explain, and behold! I am engaged 
to go to work. They furnish me with clothes of a 
design the most fashionable, and with a 'at of which 
I am myself the architect, and I go to work. I 'ate it, 
but I go to work. 

The manner of my work is this. The 'at, 'e does it 
all. {Accursed 'at!) 'E is so built that on the outside 
'e look like any other silk 'at. But 'e 'ave 'is secrets. 
'E 'ave 'is surprises. On 'is inside there is a clockwork 
and a spring. At intervals 'e separate 'imself in two 
in the middle, and the top part of 'im go up in the air, 
slowly, one inch, two inch, three inch, four inch, five 
inch, six inch — like a telescope that open 'imself out. 
And w'at 'ave we then? VoiVal We 'ave a white silk 
place, and on it is printed in grand letters: 

YOU ARE TOO FAT! 

DR. BLINN 

WILL MAKE YOU THIN 



ACCURSED HAT! 61 

(\ You see, my friend? It is now my profession, every 
r afternoon for three hours, to join the promenade; to 
idisplay my 'at; to make fast in the minds of the people 
!'ow fortunate a discovery is the anti-fat of Monsieur 
::Blinn. 

; Monsieur, I am always the gentleman. Am I forced 
I into a vulgar role? Well, then, there is something 
about me that redeems it from vulgarity. I am a mov- 
able advertisement, but none the less I am an advertise- 
ment of dignity. Those clothes they furnish, I 'ave 
made under my own direction. I adorn my foot in the 
most poetical of boots. Only a Frenchman might 'ave 
created my coat. My trousers are poems. I am 
dressed with that inspiration of elegance which only 
a man of my imagination might devise. 

Monsieur, I am always the artist. That 'at, I nevaire 
let 'im go up with a pop like a jacking-jump. 'E is not 
to startle the most sensitive of ladies. Wen 'e arise, 'e 
arise slowly. 'E is majestic in 'is movement. 'E as- 
cend with gravity. 'E go up with dignity. 

For three hours each day, I thus set aside my finer 
emotions. And all the town smile; and many 'undreds 
rush to buy the anti-fat of Monsieur Blinn. 'Ow is it 
that the Widow Flanagan 

Curses upon the perfidy of woman ! Do not 'old me, 
I say! Let me go! I will leap from your window to 
the stones below! Well, I will restrain myself. Yes, I 
will 'ave a drink. Merci! 

'Ow is it that the Widow Flanagan does not perceive 
that I thus make of my 'ead a billboard three hours 



I 



62 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 



each day? Monsieur, all Frenchmen are of an origi- \ 
nality w'en driven to it by fate, and not the least of them 
am I ! To 'er I am still the poor but 'andsome artist. J 
It is in the parlours of the agent of advertising that l 
dress myself, I don the 'at, each day. I wear before , 
my eyes a thick spectacles; I 'ide my black 'air beneath jj 
a gray wig; I 'ave shave my own beard and each day \ 
put on moustache and royal of a colour the same with | 
the wig. There is no danger that the grave foreigner, so . 
courteous, so elegant, so much the statesman, who con- 
descend to advertise the anti-fat of Monsieur Blinn, , 
shall be — shall be — w'at you call 'im? — spotted by the 
Widow Flanagan. She does not connect 'im with the ^ 
'andsome artist who in'abit 'er skylight chamber. To 
do so would be to kill my 'opes. For love is not to be 
made ridiculous. 

I prosper. I 'ave money each week. I eat. I ac- 
quire me some clothes which are not the same with those 
worn by the employee of Monsieur Blinn. I buy me 
a silk 'at which 'ave no clockwork in 'is inside. I ac- 
quire the — w'at you call 'im? — the front. I dine at 
the cafe of the Widow Flanagan beyond the street. I 
chat with the Widow Flanagan w'en I pay my check. 
Monsieur, the Widow Flanagan at las' know the 'and- 
some Frenchman exist! The front, 'e work like a 
charm. 'E give the genius beneath 'im the chance to 
show w'at 'e can do. The front, 'e make — 'ow you call 
'im? — 'e make good. 

'Ave I said enough? You are my friend; you see 
me, w'at I am. Is it possible that the Widow Flanagan 



ACCURSED HAT! 63 

! should look upon me and not be of a flutter through- 
out? I 'ave said enough. She see me; she love me. 
'With women, it is always so! 

The day is name; we will marry. Already I look 
forward to the time that I am no longer compelled to 
the service of the anti-fat of Monsieur Blinn. Already 
I indulge my fancy in my 'appiness with the beautiful 
Widow Flanagan, whose 'usband 'ave fortunately die 
and leave 'er so ver' well fix. But, helas! 

Grasp me ! Restrain me ! Again my grief 'ave over- 
power! 'Ave you a rough-on-rats in the 'ouse? 'Ave 
you a poison? Yes, you are my friend. Yes, I will 
restrain myself. Yes, I will 'ave a drink. Merci! 

The day is name. The day arrive. I 'ave shave. I 
'ave bathe. I am 'appy. I skip; I dance; I am 
exalt; all the morning I 'um a little tune — O love, love, 
love! And such a widow — so plump and so well fix! 

The wedding is at the 'ome of Madame Flanagan. 
Meantime, I am with a friend. The hour approach. 
The guests are there; the priest is there; the mother of 
the Widow Flanagan, come from afar, is there. We 
arrive, my friend and me. It is at the door that we are 
met by the mother of the Widow Flanagan. It is at 
the door she grasp my 'and; she smile, and then, before 
I 'ave time to remove my 'at 

Accursed 'at! Restrain me! I will do myself a 
mischief! Well, yes, I will be calm. I will 'ave a 
drink. Merci, my friend. 

I see 'er face grow red. She scream. She lift 'er 
and as if to strike me. She scream again. I know 



64 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

not w'at I must think. The Widow Flanagan she 'earl 
'er mother scream. She rush downstairs. I turn to 
the Widow Flanagan, but she 'as no eyes for me. She 
is gazing on my 'at. Monsieur, then I know. I 'ave 
got the wrong one in dressing; and I feel that accursed 
thing are lifting itself up to say to my bride and her 
mother: 

YOU ARE TOO FAT! 

DR. BLINN 

WILL MAKE YOU THIN 

And be'ind the Widow Flanagan and 'er mother come 
crowding fifty guests, and everyone 'as seen my 'at make 
those remarks! Accursed widow! The door is slam in 
my face! I am jilted! i 

Ah, laugh, you pigs of guests, laugh, till you shake 
down the dwelling of the Widow Flanagan! Were it 
not that I remember that I once loved you, Madame 
Flanagan, that 'ouse would now be ashes. 

Monsieur, I 'ave done. I 'ave spoken. Now I will 
die. 'Ave you a rope ? Well, I will calm myself. Oui, 
I will 'ave a drink. Merci, monsieur! 



ROONEY'S TOUCHDOWN 

"Football/' said Big Joe, the friendly waiter, laying 
down the sporting page of my paper with a reminiscent 
sigh, "ain't what it was twenty years ago. When I 
played the game it was some different from wood-tag 
and pump-pump-pull-away. It's went to the dogs." 

"Used to be a star, huh?" said I. "What college did 
you play with, Joe?" 

"No college," said Joe, "can claim me for its alma 
meter." 

He seated himself comfortably across the table from 
me, as the more sociably inclined waiters will do in that 
particular place. "I don't know that I ever was a star. 
But I had the punch, and I was as tough as that piece 
of cow you're trying to stick your fork into. And I 
played in one game the like of which has never been 
pulled off before or since." 

"Tell me about it," said I, handing him a cigar. Joe 
sniffed and tasted it suspiciously, and having made sure 
that it wasn't any brand sold on the premises, lighted 
it. There was only one other customer, and it was near 
closing time. 

"No, sir," he said, "it wasn't any kissing game in my 
day. Ever hear of a place called Kingstown, Illinois? 
Well, some has and some hasn't. It's a burg of about 

65 



66 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

five thousand souls and it's on the Burlington. Along 
about the time of the Spanish war it turned out a foot- 
ball team that used to eat all them little colleges 
through there alive. 

'The way I joined was right unexpected to me. I 
happened into the place on a freight train, looking for a 
job, and got pinched for a hobo. When they started 
to take me to the lock-up I licked the chief of police 
and the first deputy chief of police, and the second 
deputy, but the other member of the force made four, 
and four was too many for me. I hadn't been incarcer- 
ated ten minutes before a pleasant looking young fel- 
low who had seen the rumpus comes up to the cell door 
with the chief, and says through the bars: 

"'How much do you weigh?' 

" 'Enough,' says I, still feeling sore, 'to lick six long- 
haired dudes like you.' 

" 'Mebby,' says he, very amiable, 'mebby you do. 
And if you do, I've got a job for you.' 

"He was so nice about it that he made me ashamed 
of my grouch. 

" 'No offence meant,' says I. 'I only weigh 230 
pounds now. But when I'm getting the eats regular I 
soon muscles up to 250 stripped.' 

" 'I guess you'll do,' says he, 'judging by the fight you 
put up. We need strength and carelessness in the line.' 

" 'W^hat line is that?' says I, suspicious. 

" 'From now on,' says he, 'you're right tackle on the 
Kingstown Football Team. I'm going to get you a 
job with a friend of mine that runs a livery stable, but 



ROONETS TOUCHDOWN 67 

your main duty will be playing football. Are you on?' 

" 'Lead me to the training table/ says I. And he 
paid me loose and done it. 

'This fellow was Jimmy Dolan, and he had once 
played an end on Yale, and couldn't forget it. He 
and a couple of others that had been off to colleges had 
started the Kingstown Team. One was an old Michi- 
gan star, and the other had been a half-back at Cornell. 
The rest of us wasn't college men at all, but as I re- 
marked before, we were there with the punch. 

'There was Tom Sharp, for instance. Tom was 
thought out and planned and preforedestinated for a 
centre rush by Nature long before mankind ever dis- 
covered football. Tom was about seventeen hands high, 
and his style of architecture was mostly round about. 
I've seen many taller men, but none more circumferous 
as to width and thickness. Tom's chest was the size and 
shape of a barrel of railroad spikes, but a good deal 
harder. You couldn't knock him off his feet, but if 
you could have, it wouldn't have done you any good, 
for he was just as high one way as he was another — 
and none of it idle fat. Tom was a blacksmith during 
his leisure hours, and every horse and mule for miles 
around knowed him and trembled at his name. He 
had never got hold of nothing yet that was solid enough 
to show him how strong he was. 

"But the best player was a big teamster by the name 
of Jerry Coakley. Jerry was between six and eight feet 
high, and to the naked eye he was seemingly all bone. 
He weighed in at 260 pounds ad valorem, and he was 



68 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

the only long bony man like that I ever seen who could 
get himself together and start quick. Tom Sharp 
would roll down the field calm and thoughtful and 
philosophic, with the enemy clinging to him and drip- 
ping off of him and crumpling up under him, with no 
haste and no temper, like an absent-minded battleship 
coming up the bay; but this here Jerry Coakley was 
sudden and nefarious and red-headed like a train-wreck. 
And the more nefarious he was, the more he grinned and 
chuckled to himself. 

"For two years that team had been making a rep- 
utation for itself, and all the pride and affection and 
patriotism in the town was centred on to it. I joined on 
early in the season, but already the talk was about the 
Thanksgiving game with Lincoln College. This Lin- 
coln College was a right sizable school. Kingstown had 
licked it the year before, and there were many com- 
plaints of rough play on both sides. But this year Lin- 
coln had a corking team. They had beat the state 
university, and early in the season they had played 
Chicago off her feet, and they were simply yearning 
to wipe out the last year's disgrace by devastating the 
Kingstown Athletic Association, which is what we 
called ourselves. And in the meantime both sides goes 
along feeding themselves on small-sized colleges and 
athletic associations, hearing more and more about each 
other, and getting hungrier and hungrier. 

'Things looked mighty good for us up to about a 
week before Thanksgiving. Then one day Jerry Coak- 
ley turned up missing. We put in 48 hours hunting 



ROONEY'S TOUCHDOWN 69 

him, and at the end of that time there was a meeting 
of the whole chivalry and citizenry of Kingstown in the 
opery hall to consider ways and means of facing the 
public calamity. For the whole town was stirred up. 
The mayor himself makes a speech, which is printed in 
full in the Kingstown Record the next day along with a 
piece that says: 'Whither are we drifting?' 

''Next day, after practice, Jimmy Dolan is looking 
pretty blue. 

" 'Cheer up,' says I, 'J^^^y wasn't the whole team.' 

" 'He was about a fifth of it,' says Captain Dolan, 
very sober. 

" 'But the worst was yet to come. The very next day, 
at practice, a big Swede butcher by the name of Lars 
Olsen, who played right guard, managed to break his 
ankle. This here indignity hit the town so hard that it 
looked for a while like Lars would be mobbed. Some 
says Lars has sold out to the enemy and broke it on 
purpose, and the Kingstown Record has another piece 
headed: 'Have we a serpent in our midst?' 

"That night Dolan puts the team in charge of Berty 
Jones, the Cornell man, with orders to take no risks on 
anything more injurious than signal practice, and leaves 
town. He gets back on Wednesday night, and two 
guys with him. They are hustled from the train to a 
cab and from the cab to the American House, and into 
their rooms, so fast no one gets a square look at them. 

"But after dinner, which both of the strangers takes 
in their roomis, Dolan says to come up to Mr. Breitt- 
mann's room and get acquainted with him, which the 



70 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

team done. This here Breittmann is a kind of Austro- 
Hungarian Dutchman looking sort of a great big feller, 
with a foreign cast of face, like he might be a German 
baron or a Switzer waiter, and he speaks his language 
with an accent. Mr. Rooney, which is the other one's 
name, ain't mentioned at first. But after we talk with 
the Breittmann person a while Jimmy Dolan says: 

" 'Boys, Mr. Rooney has asked to be excused from 
meeting any one to-night, but you'll all have an oppor- 
tunity to meet him to-morrow — after the game.' 

" 'But,' says I, 'Cap, won't he go through signal prac- 
tice with us?' 

''Dolan and Breittmann, and Berty Jones, who was 
our quarterback and the only one in the crowd besides 
Dolan who had met Mr. Rooney, looked at each other 
and kind of grinned. Then Dolan says: 'Mr. Breitt- 
mann knows signals and will run through practice with 
us in the morning, but not Mr. Rooney. Mr. Breitt- 
mann, boys, used to be on the Yale scrub.' 

" 'Dem vas goot days, Chimmie,' says this here 
Breittmann, 'but der naturalist, Chimmie, he is also the 
good days. What?' 

"The next day, just before the game, I got my first 
glimpse of this Rooney when he come downstairs with 
Breittmann and they both piled into a cab. He wore 
a long overcoat over his football togs, and he had so 
many headpieces and nose guards and things on to him 
all you could see of his face was a bit of reddish looking 
whisker at the sides. 

" 'He's Irish by the name,' says I, 'and the way he 



ROONEY'S TOUCHDOWN 71 



! carries them shoulders and swings his arms he must 
have learned to play football by carrying the hod.' He 
I wasn't a big man, neither, and I thought he handled 
himself kind of clumsy. 

''When we got out to the football field and that 
Lincoln College bunch jumped out of their bus and be- 
gan to pass the ball around, the very first man we see 
is that there Jerry Coakley. 

"Yes, sir, sold out! 

"Dolan and me ran over to the Lincoln captain. 

"'You don't play that man!' says Dolan, mad as a 
hornet, pointing at Jerry. Jerry, he stood with his 
arms crossed, grinning and chuckling to himself, bold as 
Abraham Lincoln on the burning deck and built much 
the same. 

" 'Why not?' says the college captain, 'he's one of our 
students.' 

"'Him?' says L 'Why, he's the village truck-driver 
here!' And that there Jerry had the nerve to wink at 
me. 

" 'Mr. Coakley matriculated at Lincoln College a 
week ago,' says the captain, Jerry he grinned more and 
more, and both teams had gathered into a bunch around 
us. 

"'Matriculated? Jerry did?' says Jimmy Dolan. 
'Why, it's all Jerry can do to write his name.' 

" 'Mr. Coakley is studying the plastic arts, and tak- 
ing a special course in psychology,' says the captain. 

" 'Let him play, Dolan,' says Tom Sharp. 'Leave 
him to me. I'll learn him some art. I'll fix him!' 



72 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

" 'O, you Tom!' says Jerry, grinning good-natured. 

'' 'O, you crook!' says Tom. And Jerry, still grinning 
good-natured, hands Tom one. It took the rest of the 
two teams to separate them, and they both started the 
game with a little blood on their faces. We made no 
further kick about Jerry playing. All our boys wanted 
him in the game. 'Get him!' was the word passed 
down the line. And after that little mix-up both sides 
was eager to begin. 

"We kicked off. I noticed this here Rooney person 
got down after the kick-off rather slow, sticking close 
to his friend Breittmann. He was at left tackle, right, 
between Breittmann at guard, and Dolan, who played 
end. 

"Jerry, he caught the kick-off and come prancing up 
the field like a prairie whirlwind. But Dolan and me 
got to him about the same time, and as we downed him 
Tom Sharp, quite accidental, stepped on to his head 
with both feet. 

" Toul!' yells the referee, running up and waving his 
hand at Tom Sharp. 'Get off the field, you! I penalize 
Kingstown thirty yards for deliberate foul play!' 

"But Jerry jumped up — it took more'n a little thing 
like that to feaze Jerry — and shoved the referee aside. 

" 'No, you don't put him out of this game,' says Jerry. 
'I want him in it. I'll put him out all right!' 

"Then there was a squabble, that ended with half of 
both teams ordered off the field. And the upshot of 
which was that everybody on both sides agreed to abol- 
ish all umpires and referees, and get along without any 



ROONEY'S TOUCHDOWN 73 

penalties whatever, or any officials but the time-keeper. 
No, sir, none of us boys was in any temper by that time 
to be interfered with nor dictated to by officials. 

"Bo, what followed wasn't hampered any by techni- 
calities. No, sir, it wasn't drop the handkerchief. 
There wasn't any Hoyle or Spalding or Queensberry 
about it. It was London prize ring, savate, jiu juitsi 
and Graeco-Roman, all m.ixed up, with everybody mak- 
ing his own ground rules. The first down, when Tom 
Sharp picked up that Lincoln College Captain and hit 
Jerry Coakley over the head with him, five Lincoln Col- 
lege substitutes give a yell and threw off their sweaters 
and run on to the field. Then we heard another yell, 
and our substitutes come charging into the fray and by 
the end of the first half there was eighteen men on each 
side, including three in citizens' clothes who were using 
brass knucks and barrel staves." 

Joe paused a moment, dwelling internally upon mem- 
ories evidently too sweet for words. Then he sighed 
and murmured: "No, sir, the game ain't what it was in 
them days. Kick and run and forward pass and such 
darned foolishness! Football has went to the dogs! 

''Well," he resumed, flexing his muscles reminiscently, 
''neither side wasted any time on end runs or punts. 
It was punch the line, and then punch the line some 
more, and during the first ten minutes of play the ball 
didn't move twenty yards either way from the centre 
of the field, with a row on all the time as to whose ball 
it ought to be. As a matter of fact, it was whoever's 
could keep his hands on to it. 



74 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

"It was the third down before I noticed this fellow 
Rooney particular. Then our quarterback sent a play 
through between guard and tackle. It was up to 
Rooney to make the hole for it. 

"As the signal was give, and the ball passed back, 
Breittmann laid his arm across Rooney's shoulders, and 
I heard him say something in Dutch to him. They 
moved forward like one man, not fast, but determined 
like. A big college duffer tried to get through Rooney 
and spill the play. This here Rooney took him around 
the waist and slammed him on to the ground with a yell 
like a steamship that's discovered fire in her coal bunk- 
ers, and then knelt on the remains, while the play went 
on over 'em. I noticed Breittmann had a hard time 
getting Rooney off of him. They carried the fellow off 
considerably sprained, and two more Lincoln College 
fellows shucked their wraps and run in to take his place. 

'The very next play went through the same hole, 
only this time the fellow that went down under Rooney 
got up with blood soaking through his shoulder padding 
and swore he'd been bit. But nobody paid any at- 
tention to him, and the Lincoln boys put Jerry Coakley 
in opposite Rooney. 

" 'You cross-eyed, pigeon-toed Orangeman of a hod- 
carrier, you,' says Jerry, when we lined up, trying to 
intimidate Rooney, Til learn you football.' 

"But Rooney, with his left hand hold of Breittmann's, 
never said a word. He just looked sideways up at 
Breittmann like he was scared, or mebby shy, and 
Breittmann said something in Dutch to him. 



ROONEY'S TOUCHDOWN 75 

"That play we made five yards, and we made it 
through Jerry Coakley, too, Mr. Rooney officiating. 
When Breittmann got his friend off Jerry, Jerry set up 
and tried to grin, but he couldn't. He felt himself all 
over, surprised, and took his place in the line without 
saying a word. 

'Then we lost the ball on a fumble, which is to say 
the Lincoln centre jumped on to Tom Sharp's wrists 
with both feet when he tried to pass it, and Jerry Coak- 
ley grabbed it. The first half closed without a score, 
with the ball still in the centre of the field. 

"The second half, I could see right away, Jerry Coak- 
ley had made up his mind to do up Rooney. The very 
first play Lincoln made was a guard's back punch right 
at Rooney. I reckon the whole Lincoln team was in 
that play, with Jerry Coakley in the van. 

"We got into it, too. All of us," Joe paused again, with 
another reflective smile. Pretty soon he continued. 

"Yes, sir, that was some scrimmage. And in the 
midst of it, whoever had the ball dropped it. But for 
a minute, nobody seemed to care. And then we dis- 
covered that them unsportsmanlike Lincoln College 
students had changed to baseball shoes with metal 
spikes between the halves. We hadn't thought of that. 

"After about a minute of this mauling, clawing mess, 
right out of the midst of it rolled the ball. And then 
came this here Rooney crawling after it — crawling I 
say! — on his hands and feet. 

"He picked it up and straightened himself. 

" *Run, Rooney, run!' says L And he had a clear 



76 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

field. But he didn't seem to realize it. He just tucked 
that ball under one arm, and ambled. 

"Half a dozen of us fell in and tried to make inter- 
ference for him — but he wouldn't run; he just dog- .^ 
trotted, slow and comfortable. And in a second Jerry 
Coakley sifted through and tackled him. 

"Rooney stopped. Stopped dead in his track, as if 
he was surprised. And then, using only one hand — 
only one hand, mind you — he picked that there Jerry ; 
Coakley up, like he was an infant, give him one squeeze, i[ 
and slung him. Yes, sir, Jerry was all sort of crumpled ,i 
up when he lit! 

"And he kept on, slow and easy and gentle. The 
Lincoln gang spilled the interference. But that didn't ^ 
bother Rooney any. Slow and certain and easy he j 
went down that field. And every time he was tackled : 
he separated that tackier from himself and treated him 
like he had Jerry. a 

"Yes, sir, he strung behind him ten men out of the ^ 
nineteen players Lincoln College had in that game, as I 
he went down the field. From where I was setting on 
top of the Lincoln centre rush, I counted 'em as he took t 
'em. Slow and solemn and serious like an avenging i 
angel, Mr. Rooney made for them goal posts, taking 
no prisoners, and leaving the wounded and dead in a 
long windrow behind him. It wasn't legalized football, 
mebby, but it was a grand and majestic sight to see 
that stoop-shouldered feller with the red whiskers pro- 
ceeding calmly and unstoppably forward like the wrath 
of God. 



ROONETS TOUCHDOWN 77 



''Yes, sir, the game was ours. We thought it was, 
'leastways. All he had to do was touch that there ball 
to the ground! The whole of Kingstown was drawing 
,in its breath to let out a cheer as soon as he done it. 
"I "But it never let that yell. For when he reached the 
goal " 

Here Joe broke off again and chuckled. 

"Say,'' he said, "you ain't going to believe what I'm 
telling you now. It's too unlikely. I didn't believe it 
myself when I seen it. But it happened. Yes, sir, that 
;nut never touched the ground with the ball! 
I "Instead, with the ball still under one arm, he climbed 
a goal post. Climbed it, I tell you, with both legs and 
one arm. And setting straddle of that cross bar believe 
me or not, be began to shuck. In front of all that 
] crowd, dud after dud, he shucked. 
' "And there wasn't no cheers then, for in a minute 
there he set, a monkey! Yes, sir, the biggest blamed 
monkey you ever seen, trying to crack that football 
open on a goal post under the belief that it was a cocoa- 
nut. Monkey, did I say? Monkey ain't any word 
for it! He was a regular ape; he was one of these here 
orang-outang baboons ! Yes, sir, a regular gosh-darned 
! Darwinian gorilla!" 

' Joe took a fresh light for his cigar, and cocked his eye 
again at my sporting supplement. "I notice," he said, 
] sarcastically, "Princeton had a couple of men hurt 
I yesterday in the Yale game. Well, accidents is bound 
' to happen even in ring-around-the-rosy or prisoner's 
base. What?" 



TOO AMERICAN 

"Is IT a real English cottage?" we asked the agent ^ 
suspiciously, *'or is it one that has been hastily aged to 
rent to Americans?" 1 

It was the real thing: he vouched for it. It was right ^ 
in the middle of England. The children could walk 'j 
for miles in any direction without falling off the edge of ^ 
England and getting wet. 

"See here!" I said. "How many blocks from Scot- j 
land is it?" 

"Blocks from Scotland?" He didn-t understand. 

"Yes," I said, "blocks from' Scotland." I explained. 
My wife and I had been trying to get a real English 
accent. That was one of the things we had come to J 
England for. We wanted to take it back with us and 
use it in Brooklyn, and we didn't want to get too near ' 
Scotland and get any Scottish dialect mixed up with it. 
It seemed that the cottage was quite a piece from Scot- 
land. There was a castle not far away — the fifteenth 
castle on the right side as you go into England. When 
there wasn't any wind you didn't get a raw sea breeze 
or hear the ocean vessels whistle. 

"Is it overgrown with ivy/' asked Marian, my 
wife. 

Yes, it was ivy-covered. You could scarcely see it ' 

78 



TOO AMERICAN 79 

for ivy — ivy that was pulling the wall down, ivy as 
deep-rooted as the hereditary idea. 

"Are the drains bad?" I asked. 

They were. There would be no trouble on that score. 
What plumbing there was, was leaky. The roof leaked. 
There was neither gas nor electricity, nor hot and cold 
water, nor anything else. 

"I suppose the place is rather damp?" I said to the 
agent. ''Is it chilly most of the time? Are the flues 
defective? Are the floors uneven? Is the place thor- 
oughly uncomfortable and unsanitary and unhabitable 
in every particular?" 

Yes, it had all these advantages. I was about to 
sign the lease when my wife plucked me by the sleeve 
in her impulsive American way. "Is there a bath- 
room?" she asked. 

"My dear Mrs. Minever," said the agent with dignity, 
"there is not. I can assure you that there are no conven- 
iences of any kind. It is a real English cottage." 

I took the place. It was evening of the third day 
after we took possession that I discovered that we had 
been taken in. All the other Americans in that part 
of England were sitting out in front of their cottages 
trying to look as if they were accustomed to them, and 
we — my wife and Uncle Bainbridge and I — were sitting 
in front of ours trying to act as English as we knew 
how, when a voice hailed me. 

"You are Americans, aren't you, sir?" said the voice. 

The voice was anyhow; so we shamefacedly con- 
fessed. 



80 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 



w 



"\ thought you looked like it," said the voice, and 
its owner came wavering toward us through the twi- 
light. 

"What makes you think we look like it?" I said, a 
trifle annoyed; for it had been my delusion that we 
had got ourselves to looking quite English — English 
enough, at least, so that no one could tell us in the faint 
light 

"Our clothes don't fit us, do they?" asked my wife 
nervously. 

"They can't fit us," said I ; "they were made in Lon- 
don." 

I spoke rather sharply, I suppose. And as I was 
speaking, a most astonishing thing happened — the per- 
son I had been speaking to suddenly disappeared. He 
was, and then he was not! I sprang up, and I could 
tell from my wife's exclamation that she was startled, 
too. As for Uncle Bainbridge, he seldom gives way to 
emotion not directly connected with his meals or his 
money. 

"Here, you!" I called out loudly, looking about me. 

The figure came waveringly into view again. 

"Where did you go to?" I demanded. "What do you 
mean by acting like that? Who are you, anyhow?" 

"Please, sir," said the wavery person, "don't speak so 
crosslike. It always makes me vanish. I can't help 
it, sir." 

He continued timidly: 

"I heard a new American family had moved here 
and I dropped by to ask you, sir, do you need a ghost?" 



TOO AMERICAN 81 

I "A ghost! Are you " 

: "Yes, sir," with a deprecating smile. "Only an 

American ghost; but one who would appreciate a situa- 

jtion all the more, sir, for that reason. I don't mind 

telling you that there's a feeling against us American 

I ghosts here in England, and I've been out of a place 

for some time. Maybe you have noticed a similar 

i feeling toward Americans? I'm sure, sir, you must 

: have noticed a discrimination, and " 

''Don't say 'sir' all the time," I told him. 
. "Beg pardon, sir," he rejoined: "but it's a habit. I've 
tried very hard to fit myself to English ways and it's got 
to be second nature, sir. My voice I can't change; but 
my class — I was a barber in America, sir — my class I 
have learned. And," he repeated rather vacantly, "I 
just dropped by to see if you wanted a ghost. Being fel- 
low Americans, you know, I thought " His voice 

trailed off into humble silence, and he stood twisting a 
shadowy hat round and round in his fingers. 
"See here!" I said. "Should we have a ghost?" 
"Beg pardon, sir, but how much rent do you pay?" 
I told him. 

He answered politely but with decision, "Then, sir, in 
all fairness, you are entitled to a ghost with the place. 
It gives a certain tone, sir." 
"Why weren't we given one, then?" I asked 

"Well " he said, and paused. If a ghost can 

blush with embarrassment, he blushed. "You see," he 
went on, making it as easy for me as he could, "Eng- 
lish ghosts mostly object to haunting Americans, just 



82 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

as American ghosts find it difficult to get places in 

English houses and cottages. You see, sir, we are " 

He halted lamely, and then finished, "We're so Ameri- 
can somehow, sir.'* 

"But we've been cheated!" I said. 

"Yes, sir," said the American ghost, "regularly had." 
He said it in quite an English manner, and I compli- 
mented him on his achievement. He smiled with a 
child's delight. 

"Would I do?" he urged again, with a kind of timid 
insistence. 

My sympathies were with him. "You don't mind 
children?" I said. "We have two." 

"No," he replied; "leastways, if they aren't very 
rough, I am not much frightened of them." 

"I guess," I began, "that " I was about to say 

that he would do, when my wife interrupted me. 

"We do not want a ghost at all," she said firmly. 

"But, my dear " 

She raised her eyebrows at me, and I was silent. 
After looking from one to the other of us wistfully for 
a moment, the applicant turned and drifted away, van- 
ishing dejectedly when he reached the gate. 

"You heard what he said, Henry?" said my wife as 
he disappeared. "It is lucky that you have me by 
you ! Do you want to saddle yourself with an Ameri- 
can ghost? For my part, I will have an English ghost 
or none!" 

I realized that Marian was right; but I felt sorry for 
the ghost. 



TOO AMERICAN 83 

"What did — the fellow — want?" roared Uncle Bain- 
bridge, who is deaf, and brings out his words two or 
three at a time. 

"Wanted to know — if we wanted — a ghost!" I 
roared in reply. 

"Goat? Goat? Huh-huh!" shouted Uncle Bain- 
bridge. "No, sir! Get 'em a pony — and a cart — little 
cart! That's the best — thing — for the kids!" 

Uncle Bainbridge is, in fact, so deaf that he is never 
bothered by the noises he makes when he eats. As a 
rule when you speak to him he first says, "How?" 
Then he produces a kind of telephone arrangement. 
He plugs one end into his ear, and shoves a black rub- 
ber disk at you. You talk against the disk, and when 
he disagrees with you he pulls the plug out of his ear 
to stop your foolish chatter, and snorts contemptuously. 
Once my wife remarked to me that Uncle Bainbridge's 
hearing might be better if he would only cut those 
bunches of long gray hair out of his ears. They annoy 
every one except Uncle Bainbridge a great deal. But 
the plug was in, after all, and he heard her, and asked 
one of the children in a terrible voice to fetch him the 
tin box he keeps his will in. 

Uncle Bainbridge is my uncle. My wife reminds me 
of that every now and then. And he is rather hard to 
live with. But Marian, in spite of his little idiosyncra- 
sies, has always been generous enough to wish to pro- 
tect him from designing females only too ready to 
marry him for his money. So she encourages him to 
make his home with us. If he married at all, she 



84 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

preferred that he should marry her cousin, Miss Sophia 
Calderwod. That was also Miss Sophia's preference. 
We did get a ghost, however, and a real English ghost. 
The discovery was mine. I was sitting in the room we 
called the library one night, alone with my pipe, when I 
heard a couple of raps in, on, about, or behind a large 
bookcase that stood diagonally across one corner. It 
was several days after we had refused the American 
applicant, and I had been thinking of him more or less, 
and wondering what sort of existence he led. One half 
the world doesn't know how the other half lives. I 
suppose my reflections had disposed my mind to psychic 
receptivity; for when I heard raps I said at once: 

''Are there any good spirits in the room?" It is a 
formula I remembered from the days when I had been 
greatly interested in psychic research. 

Rap! rap! came the answer from behind the book- 
case. 

I made a tour of the room, and satisfied myself that 
it was not a flapping curtain, or anything like that. 

"Do you have a message for me?" I asked. 

The answer was in the afl^irmative. 

"What is it?" 

There was a confused and rapid jumble of raps. I 
repeated the question with the same result. 

"Can you materialize?" 

The ghost rapped no. 

Then it occurred to me that probably this was a ghost 
of the sort that can communicate with the visible world 
only through replying to such questions as can be an- 



TOO AMERICAN 85 

swered by yes or no. There are a great many of these 
ghosts. Indeed, my experience in psychic research has 
led me to the conclusion that they are in the majority. 

"Were you sent down by the agent to take this 
place?" I asked. 

"No!'' It is impossible to convey in print the sug- 
gestion of hauteur and offended dignity and righteous 
anger that the ghost managed to get into that single 
rap. I have never felt more rebuked in my life; I have 
never been made to feel more American. 

"Sir or madam/' I said, letting the regret I felt be 
apparent in my voice, "I beg your pardon. If you 
please, I should like to know whose ghost you are. I 
will repeat the alphabet. You may rap when you 
wish me to stop at a letter. In that way you can 
spell out your information. Is that satisfactory?" 

It was. 

"Who are you?'' 

Slowly, and with the assured raps of one whose 
social position is defined, fixed, and secure in whatever 
state of existence she may chance to fmd herself, the 
ghost spelled out, "Lady Agatha Pelham.'' 

I hope I am not snobbish. Indeed, I think I have 
proved over and over again that I am not, by frankly 
confessing that I am an American. But at the same 
time I could not repress a little exclamation of pleasure 
at the fact that we were haunted by the ghost of a mem- 
ber of the English aristocracy. You may say what you 
will, but there is a certain something — a manner — an 
air — I scarcely know how to describe it, but it is there; 



86 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

it exists. In England, one meets it so often — I hope 
you take me. 

My gratification must have revealed itself in my 
manner. Lady Agatha rapped out, if anything with 
more haughtiness than she had previously employed — 
yes, even with a touch of defiance : 

''I was at one time a governess." 

I gradually learned that while her own family was as 
good as the Pelham family. Lady Agatha's parents had 
been in very reduced circumstances, and she had had to 
become a governess. When Sir Arthur Pelham had 
married her, his people acted very nasty. He hadn't 
any money, and they had wanted him to marry some. 
He got to treating her very badly before he died. And 
during his lifetime, and after it, Lady Agatha had had 
a very sad life indeed. Still, you know, she was an 
aristocrat. She made one feel that as she told her story 
bit by bit. For all this came very gradually, as the 
result of many conversations, and not at once. We 
speedily agreed upon a code, very similar to the Morse 
telegraphic code, and we still further abbreviated this, 
until our conversations, after a couple of weeks, got to be 
as rapid as that of a couple of telegraph operators chat- 
ting over the wires. I intimated that it must be rather 
rough on her to be haunting Americans, and she said 
that she had once lived in our cottage and liked it. 

In spite of her aristocracy, I don't suppose there ever 
was a more domestic sort of ghost than Lady Agatha. 
We all got quite fond of her, and I think she did of us, 
too, in spite of our being American. Even the chil- 



TOO AMERICAN 87 

dren got into the habit of taking their little troubles 
and perplexities to her. And Marian used to say that 
with Lady Agatha in the house, when Uncle Bain- 
bridge and I happened to be away, she felt so safe 
somehow. 

I imagine the fact that she had once been a governess 
would have made it rather difficult for Lady Agatha in 
the house of an English family of rank. On the other 
hand, her inherent aristocratic feeling made it quite 
impossible for her to haunt any one belonging to the 
middle or lower classes. She could haunt us, as Ameri- 
cans, and not feel that the social question mattered so 
much, in spite of what the American ghost had hinted. 
We Americans are so unclassified that the English often 
take chances with individuals, quite regardless of what 
each individual's class would naturally be if he had a 
class. Even while they do this they make us feel very 
often that we are hopelessly American; but they do it, 
and I, for one, am grateful. Lady Agatha sympathized 
with our desire to become as English as possible, she 
could quite understand that. I find that many Eng- 
lishmen approve the effort, although remaining confi- 
dent that it will end in failure. 

Lady Agatha helped us a great deal. We used to 
have lessons in the evenings in the library. For in- 
stance, the children would stand at attention in front 
of the bookcase, and repeat a bit of typical English 
slang, trying to do it in an absolutely English way. 
They would do it over and over and over, until finally 
Lady Agatha would give a rap of approval. Or I would 



88 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

pretend that I was an Englishman in a railway carriage, 
and that an American had just entered and I was 
afraid he would speak to me. I got rather good at this, 
and made two or three trips to London to try it out. I 
found that Americans were imposed on, and actually 
in one instance I made one Englishman think that I was 
an Englishman who thought he was an American. He 
was a nobody, however, and didn't really count. And 
then, I am afraid, I spoiled it all. We Americans so 
often spoil it all ! I enjoyed it so that I told him. He 
looked startled and said, ''But how American!" He 
was the only Englishman I ever fooled. 

But Lady Agatha's night classes were of great benefit 
to us. We used to practise how to behave toward 
English servants at country houses, and how to act 
when presented at court, and dozens of things like that : 
not that we had been asked to a country house, or ex- 
pected to be presented at court soon. Marian and I 
had agreed that the greater part of this information 
would be quite useless while Uncle Bainbridge was still 
spared to us. Even in Brooklyn Uncle Bainbridge 
had been something of a problem at times. But we 
thought it just as well to prepare ourselves for the sad 
certainty that Uncle Bainbridge would pass into a 
better world before many years. 

Uncle Bainbridge, who is very wealthy indeed, affects 
more informality than the usual self-made man. He 
used to attend our evening classes with a contemptuous 
expression upon his face, and snort at intervals. Once 
he even called me 'Tuppy!" Then he thrust his tele- 



TOO AMERICA!^ 89 

phone arrangement before my face and insisted that I 
tell him whether I was sane or not. 

"Puppy!" he bellowed. "Quit apin' the English! I 
get along with 'em myself — without any nonsense! 
Treat 'em white! Always treat me white! No fool- 
ishness! Puppy!" 

My wife and I soon discovered that Lady Agatha 
and Uncle Bainbridge were on the most friendly terms. 
He would sit for hours in the library, with his telephone 
receiver held patiently near the bookcase, shouting 
questions and smiling and nodding over the answers. 
Marian and I were afraid that Uncle Bainbridge, by 
his lack of polish, might offend Lady Agatha. And at 
first it was her custom to hover about anxiously while 
they were talking to each other. But Uncle Bain- 
bridge discovered this, and resented it to such an extent 
that she had to be cautious indeed. 

His talks with Lady Agatha became longer and 
longer, and more and more frequent, until finally he 
received more of her attention than all the rest of us 
put together. Indeed, we need not have worried about 
Uncle Bainbridge's offending Lady Agatha: the friend- 
ship grew closer and closer. We were certain finally 
that it was taking on a strong tinge of sentimentality. 
One day my wife stopped me just outside the library 
door and said in a whisper, indicating the general di- 
rection of Lady Agatha's bookcase with a wave of her 
hand: 

"Henry, those two old things in there are calling 
each other Hiram and Agatha!" 



90 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

I listened, and it was so. A week later I heard 
Uncle Bainbridge seated by the bookcase, bellowing out 
a sentimental song. He was having a great deal of 
difficulty with it, and in order that he might hear him- 
self he was singing with the black disk arrangement 
held directly in front of his own mouth. 

I cannot say that Uncle Bainbridge became ethereal- 
ized by the state of his feelings toward Lady Agatha, 
whatever the exact state of his feeling may have been. 
But he did change a little, and the change was for the 
better. He cut out the bunches of gray hair from his 
ears, and he began to take care of his fingernails. Lady 
Agatha was having a good influence upon him. 

One day, as he and I were standing by the front gate, 
he suddenly connected himself for speech and roared at 
me, with a jerk of his thumb toward the house. 

'Tine woman!'' 

''Who?" I shouted back. 

''Aggie." 

"Why, yes. I suppose she — was." 

"No nonsense!" he yelled. "Husband was a brute! 
Marry her myself! In a minute — if possible. Ain't 
possible! Shame! Bet she could make — good dump- 
lings — apple dumplings! Huh!" 

Uncle Bainbridge is very fond of apple dumplings. 
His final test of a woman is her ability to make good 
apple dumplings. Several women might have married 
him had they been able to pass that examination. He 
can pay no higher compliment to a woman than to be 
willing to believe her able to make good dumplings. 



TOO AMERICAN 91 

"Aggie, in there!" he roared again, impatient because 
I was slow in answering. ''Dumplings! That kind of 
woman — could have made — good dumplings!" 

I felt, somehow, that it was going a bit too far to 
imagine Lady Agatha at so plebeian a task as making 
apple dumplings. 

"Uncle Bainbridge," I shouted, "the upper classes — 
in England — can't make — apple dumplings!" 

Even as I shouted I was aware that some bypasser, 
startled at our loud voices, was pausing just outside the 
gate. I turned to encounter for a moment the haughty 
glare of the most English-looking elderly woman I have 
ever seen. She had a large, high nose, and she was a 
large, high-looking handsome woman generally. She 
said no word to me; but as she stared her lips moved 
ever so slightly. I fancied that to herself she said, 
"Indeed!" I have never felt more utterly superfluous, 
more abjectly American. She turned from me with an 
air that denied my existence, a manner that indicated 
that such things as I could not exist, and it would be 
foolish to try to make her believe they did exist. 
She bowed to Uncle Bainbridge, smiled as he returned 
her bow, and passed on. Uncle Bainbridge's eyes fol- 
lowed her admiringly. 

" 'Nother fine woman!" he thundered, so that she 
must have heard him. "Friend of mine! Sensible 
woman! No frills!" 

I tried to ask him who she was, when and where he 
had become acquainted with her, and a dozen other 
questions; but Uncle Bainbridge unplugged himself, 



92 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

cutting oflF all communication with the outer world, 
and resolutely refused any information. That he 
should know the lady did not surprise me, however. 
It had happened several times since we had been in 
England that Uncle Bainbridge had become friendly 
with people whom we did not know. We never got 
from him any exact idea as to the social status of '1 
these persons, and indeed we always found that he ^ 
had no really definite ideas on that subject to commu- \ 
nicate. ^ 

Our dear Lady Agatha was almost the only English I 
friend my wife and I had made. 

My wife and I were very well contented that Uncle 1 
Bainbridge's feeling for Lady Agatha should grow i 
stronger and stronger. We argued that while he was j 
so intimately friendly with dear Lady Agatha he would '' 
not be so likely to fall a prey to any person who might '[ 
want to marry him for his wealth. So we decided to ' 
encourage the friendship in every way possible, and 
would have been only too glad to have it go on indefi- ' 
nitely. 

"I feel so at peace about Uncle Bainbridge now," was 
the way my wife expressed it, "with him and dear Lady ■ 
Agatha so wrapped up in each other.'' ' 

But this cheerful condition of affairs was not destined ' 
to last many weeks. One day my wife received a let- i 
ter from her cousin, Miss Sophia Calderwood. Cousin 
Sophia was in London, and would be with us on the ^ 
coming Saturday. She had spoken of the possibility' 
of paying us a visit while we were in England, and of 



TOO AMERICAN 93 

course we had urged her to do so; although at the time 
the possibility had seemed rather remote to us. 

Miss Sophia was past her first youth, but still very 
girlish at times. Under her girlishness there was a 
grim determination. She had made up her mind to 
marry Uncle Bainbridge. My wife, as I have already 
said, had been inclined to favour the idea, since it would 
keep strangers from getting hold of Uncle Bainbridge's 
money. But now that Uncle Bainbridge and Lady 
Agatha were getting along so well together my wife 
had begun to hope that Uncle Bainbridge would never 
marry anybody. We both thought the friendship 
might become an ideal, but none the less overmaster- 
ing, passion; one of those sacred things, you know, of 
the sort that keeps a man single all his life. If Uncle 
Bainbridge remained unmarried out of regard for Lady 
Agatha, we agreed, it would be much better for him 
at his time of life than to wed Miss Sophia. 

So we both considered Miss Sophia's visit rather 
inopportune. Not that we felt that Uncle Bainbridge 
was predisposed toward her. On the contrary, he had 
always manifested more fear than affection for her. 
But, I repeat, she was a determined woman. The quality 
of her determination needed no better evidence than 
the fact that she had, to put it vulgarly, pursued her 
quarry across the seas. It was evident that the citadel 
of Uncle Bainbridge's heart was to undergo a terrible 
assault. As for him, when he heard she was coming, 
he only emitted a noncommittal snort. 

Miss Sophia, when she arrived, had apparently put 



94 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

in the months since we had seen her in resolute attempts 
at rejuvenation. She was more girlish than I had 
known her in fifteen years. And she had set up a lisp. 
She greeted Uncle Bainbridge impulsively, effusively. 

'Tou dear man," she shrilled into his telephone, "you 
don't detherve it, but gueth what I've brought you all 
the way acroth the ocean! A new rethipe for apple 
dumplings!" 

"How?" said Uncle Bainbridge. "What say?" And 
when she repeated it he said "Umph!" disconnected 
himself, and blew his nose loudly. He rarely said any- 
thing to her but "Umph!" walking away afterward with 
now and then a worried backward glance. 

When we told Miss Sophia about Lady Agatha, and 
she finally understood the intimacy that had grown up 
between Lady Agatha and Uncle Bainbridge, she looked 
reproachfully at my wife, as if to say, "You have been 
a traitor to my cause!" And then she announced very 
primly, quite forgetting her lisp, "I am quite sure that 
I, for one, do not care to make the acquaintance of this 
person!" 

"Cousin Sophia," said my wife sharply, "what do 
you mean by that?" 

"I think. Cousin Marian, that my meaning is suffi- 
ciently clear." 

"You forget," rejoined my wife icily, "that dear Lady 
Agatha is our guest." 

Miss Sophia snifi'ed, and was silent. 

"Besides," continued Marian, "what can you pos- 
sibly have against her?" 



TOO AMERICAN 95 

*'Marian," said Miss Sophia, "will you answer me 
one question?" 

'Terhaps, Cousin Sophia." 

''Cousin Marian, where, I ask you, where is Sir Arthur 
Pelham?" 

"Why, how should I know, Cousin Sophia?" My 
wife was genuinely puzzled by the question, and so 
was I. 

"Exactly!" And Miss Sophias voice was acid. 
"How should you know? I imagine it is a point upon 
which Lady Agatha Pelham, under the circumstances, 
has not been very communicative." 

"But, Cousin Sophia " I began. 

She interrupted me. "Cousin Henry," she said, "do 
you mean to say that you approve of these goings-on 
in your house? The idea of a married woman entering 
into a perfectly open flirtation with a man, as this 
Lady Agatha Pelham has done! Not that I blame 
Hiram Bainbridge; for men are susceptible when skill- 
fully practised upon — especially with arts which I have 
never stooped to employ. It is shameless. Cousin 
Henry, shameless! If Cousin Marian's mother were 
alive, she would at least see that the children were 
sent back to America before they become contaminated 
by this atmosphere. Cousin Henry, to think that you 
have been so corrupted by European ways already that 
you acquiesce in this anomalous relationship!" 

"I should hardly call it that. Cousin Sophia," I ven- 
tured, "and for the life of me I cannot see anything 
wrong." 



96 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

It took me a little while to catch Miss Sophia's point 
of view. I am bound to say that she presented it 
rather convincingly. If Sir Arthur had been alive, she 
said, she would have seen nothing wrong in Lady 
Agatha forming any ties she might choose in the spirit i 
world. Or if Sir Arthur had been in the spirit world J 
and Lady Agatha in the earth life, she would have t 
exonerated Lady Agatha from any indelicacy in form- J 
ing a close friendship with Uncle Bainbridge. But since \ 
both Sir Arthur and Lady Agatha were in the spirit 1 
life, Lady Agatha's place was with Sir Arthur. \ 

"Aristocrat or not," she said, "she is indelicate, she J 
is unladylike, she is coarse, or she would not carry on ^ 
in this fashion with a man to whom she is not married." ; 

"I will not have dear Lady Agatha insulted!" said i 
my wife, white with anger, rising from the chair in ^ 
which she had been sitting. 

"It is I who have been insulted, by being asked to 
a house where such a brazen and indecent affair is ac- i 
cepted as a matter of course," said Cousin Sophia. i 

I hastily interposed. 1 saw that my wife was about 
to cast prudence to the winds and tell Miss Sophia j 
that if she felt that way about it she might as well ^ 
leave. Miss Sophia is very well-to-do herself, and my :i 
wife is her only near relation. I did not fear that the 
rupture would be permanent; for I had known Marian / 
and Cousin Sophia to go quite this far many times 
before, and, indeed, in an hour they had both apparently 
got over their temper. 

Miss Sophia, although certain now that she would 1 



TOO AMERICAN 97 

receive no assistance from my wife in her siege of Uncle 
Bainbridge, did not swerve from her determination to 
subjugate him. I imagine it is rather difficult to give 
battle when your rival is a ghost : the very intangibility 
of the tie makes it hard to attack. Yet the person 
who is in the earth life has certain advantages also. I 
do not know whether I have mentioned it or not, but 
Miss Sophia could scarcely be called beautiful. One 
after another, all her life, she had seen men upon whom 
she had set her affection become the husbands of other 
women, and in her duel with the ghost there was a 
quality of desperation that made the struggle, every 
move of which I watched, extremely interesting. In 
spite of her announcement that she did not care to 
meet Lady Agatha, she learned the code by which she 
communicated with us, and did not absent herself from 
our gatherings in the library. 

Miss Sophia must have been desperate indeed, or she 
would not have resorted to the trick she used. About 
a week after Miss Sophia's arrival Lady Agatha sud- 
denly ceased to communicate with us. We grew 
alarmed, wondering what could have happened to her, 
as the days passed and the friendly rappings were not 
resumed. In the light of what happened later I am sure 
that Miss Sophia deliberately drove Lady Agatha away. 
What method she used I do not know. But if she had 
said to Lady Agatha directly the things that she had 
said to us about her, the insult would have been quite 
sufficient to make that proud and gentle spirit take 
her departure. Likely Miss Sophia got into com- 



98 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

munication with Lady Agatha and hurled at her the 
bitter question, "Where is Sir Arthur Pelham?" Lady 
Agatha was not the person to enter into any vulgar 
quarrel, nor yet to vouchsafe explanations concerning 
her personal affairs. 

Several days after Lady Agatha fell silent I heard 
Uncle Bainbridge bellowing forth questions in the 
library. I was outside the house near the library 
window, which was open. Thinking joyously that 
Lady Agatha had returned to us, I stepped nearer to 
the window to make sure. I saw at once, as I peeped 
in, that the bookcase, which set very near the window, 
had been slightly moved. Miss Sophia, who was very 
thin, had managed to introduce herself into the tri- 
angular space behind it — 1 had mentioned that it 
set diagonally across one corner. She was crouched 
upon the floor rapping out a conversation with Uncle 
Bainbridge — impersonating Lady Agatha! Uncle Bain- 
bridge, in front of the bookcase, was apparently un- 
suspicious; nor did Miss Sophia suspect that I saw 
her through the half-inch of window that commanded 
her hiding place. 

'Tou must marry!" rapped Miss Sophia, in the 
character of Lady Agatha. 

"Who?" bellowed Uncle Bainbridge. 

"Miss Sophia Calderwood," said the fake ghost. 

"Aggie, I'm hanged if I do!" yelled Uncle Bainbridge. 
"Ask me — something — easy!" 

"Hiram, listen carefully," began the false Lady 
Agatha. Then she told him that this would be their 



TOO AMERICAN 99 

last interview. Circumstances over which she had no 
control compelled her to depart. She was to assume 
another phase of existence upon another plane. She 
could not explain to him so that he would understand. 
But her interest in him would never flag. And she 
knew that he would be happier wedded to some good 
woman. It was apparent to her that Miss Sophia 
would make him the ideal wife. He would soon learn 
to love Miss Sophia. She had considerable difficulty 
in getting the promise; but finally Uncle Bainbridge 
snorted out a pledge that he would marry, and stumped 
away. 

That night he went to London. It was a week before 
he returned. I did not communicate what I had seen 
and heard to Marion. The truth was, I felt rather 
sorry for Miss Sophia. To resort to such a trick she 
must have been desperate indeed. I tried to imagine 
what her life had been, and not condemn her too harshly. 
And besides, if she was to marry Uncle Bainbridge, 
which seemed settled now, I did not care to have her 
aware that I knew her secret. 

During the absence of Uncle Bainbridge she became 
quietly radiant, as befits one who knows that the battle 
is won. She was evidently certain that he would speak 
definitely upon his return. 

The night that he came back he gathered us all about 
him in the library. ''Something to say! Important'/' 
he shouted. 

We all assumed attitudes of attention. 

"Thinking maybe — get married!" said Uncle Bain- 



100 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

bridge. It was just like Uncle Bainbridge to announce 
the matter in the lady's presence before having formally 
asked her; but I felt that it was a trifle hard on Miss 
Sophia. But a glance at her reassured me on that 
score. She was flushed; but it was the flush of triumph 
rather than the flush of embarrassment. 

"Bought a brewery!" said Uncle Bainbridge. "Good 
brewery! Good beer! Like English beer! Like Eng- 
lish people!" 

I felt that this was a little irrelevant, and I am sure 
that Miss Sophia felt the same way. 

"Bought a castle!" said Uncle Bainbridge, warming 
to the work. "Fine castle! Like castles! Fix it up! 
Live in it! Settle here! Like England! Fine country." 

"A castle! Oh, how lovely!" shrilled Miss Sophia, 
clapping her hands girlishly. "How lovely for all of 
us!" 

"Not invited!" roared Uncle Bainbridge, taking us 
all in with one sweeping gesture. "None of you !" 

There was silence for a moment. 

"Going to get married!" said Uncle Bainbridge, ris- 
ing to his feet. "Not Sophia! Caught Sophia — behind 
bookcase! Knew all the time! Sneaky trick! Marry 
fme woman ! Henry saw her — over the fence that day! 
Fine woman! Curate's mother here! Dumplings! 
Fine dumplings! Learned to make 'em for me! She 
don't want — to get too thick — with any my relations! 
She says — all of you — are too American !" 

And as Uncle Bainbridge blew his nos^ loudly and sat 
down there was a sudden rattle of rapping from the 



TOO AMERICAN 101 

bookcase: nothing so articulate as a remark in the code, 
but a sound more like a ripple of well-bred laughter. 
This was the last we ever heard from Lady Agatha, 
and I have sometimes wondered just what she meant 
by it. It is so hard, sometimes, to understand just 
what the English are laughing at. ^ 



THE SADDEST MAN 

The bench, the barrel, and the cracker box in front of 
Hennery McNabb's general store held three men, all 
of whom seemed to be thinking. Two of them were 
not only thinking but chewing tobacco as well. The 
third, more enterprising than the other two, more active, 
was exerting himself prodigiously. He was thinking, 
chewing tobacco, and whittling all at the same time. 

Two of the men were native and indigenous to Hazel- 
ton. They drew their sustenance from the black soil 
of the Illinois prairie on which the little village was 
perched. They were as calm and placid as the growing 
corn in the fields round about, as solid and self-possessed 
and leisurely as the bull-heads in the little creek down 
at the end of Main Street. 

The third man was a stranger, somewhere between 
six and eight feet high and so slender that one might 
have expected the bones to pop through the skin, if one's 
attention had not been arrested by the skin itself. For 
he was covered and contained by a most peculiar skin. 
It was dark and rubbery-looking rather than leathery, 
and it seemed to be endowed with a life of its own almost 
independent of the rest of the man's anatomy. When 
a fly perched upon his cheek he did not raise his hand to 
brush it off. The man himself did not move at all. 



THE SADDEST MAN 103 

But his skin moved. His skin rose up, wrinkled, 
twitched, rippled beneath the fly's feet, and the fly took 
alarm and went away from there as if an earthquake 
had broken loose under it. He was a sad-looking man. 
He looked sadder than the mummy of an Egyptian 
king who died brooding on what a long dry spell lay 
ahead of him. 

It was this third man of whom the other two men 
were thinking, this melancholy stranger who sat and 
stared through the thick, humid heat of the July day 
at nothing at all, with grievous eyes, his ego motionless 
beneath the movements of his rambling skin. He had 
driven up the road thirty minutes before in a flivver, 
had bought some chewing tobacco of Hennery McNabb, 
and had set himself down in front of the store and 
chewed tobacco in silence ever since. 

Finally Ben Grevis, the village grave-digger and 
janitor of the church, broke through the settled stillness 
with a question: 

''Mister," he said, ''you ain't done nothing you're 
afraid of being arrested for, hev you?" 

The stranger slowly turned his head toward Ben and 
made a negative sign. He did not shake his head in 
negation. He moved the skin of his forehead from 
left to right and back again three or four times. And 
his eyebrows moved as his skin moved. But his eyes 
remained fixed and melancholy. 

"Sometimes," suggested Hennery McNabb, who had 
almost tired himself out whittling, "a man's system 
needs overhaulin', same as a horse's needs drenchin'. I 



104 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

don't aim to push my goods on to no man, but if you 
was feelin' anyway sick, inside or out, I got some of 
Splain's Liniment for Man and Beast in there that 
might fix you up." 

''I ain't sick," said the stranger, in a low and gentle 
voice. 

"I never seen many fellers that looked as sad as you 
do," volunteered Ben Grevis. 'There was a mighty 
sad-lookin' tramp, that resembled you in the face some, 
was arrested here for bein' drunk eight or nine years 
ago, only he wasn't as tall as you an' his skin was dif- 
ferent. After Si Emery, our city marshal, had kep' 
him in the lock-up over Sunday and turned him loose 
again, it come to light he was wanted over in I'way 
for killin' a feller with a piece of railroad iron." 

"I ain't killed anybody with any railroad iron over 
in I'way," said the lengthy man. And he added, with 
a sigh: "Nor nowheres else, neither." 

Hennery McNabb, who disagreed with everyone on 
principle — he was the Village Atheist, and proud of it — 
addressed himself to Ben Grevis. 'This feller ain't 
nigh as sad-lookin' as that tramp looked," said Hennery. 
"I've knowed any number of fellers sadder-Iookin' than 
this feller here." 

"I didn't say this feller here was the saddest-lookin' 
feller I ever seen," said Ben Grevis. "All I meant was 
that he is sadder-Iookin' than the common run of fel- 
lers." While Hennery disagreed with all the world, Ben 
seldom disagreed with any one but Hennery. They 
would argue by the hour, on religious matters, always 



THE SADDEST MAN 105 

beginning with Hennery's challenge: "Ben Grevis, tell 
me just one thing if you can, where did Cain get his 
wife?" and always ending with Ben's statement: "I 
believe the Book from kiver to kiver/' 

The tall man with the educated skin — it was edu- 
cated, very evidently, for with a contraction of the hide 
on the back of his hand he nonchalantly picked up a 
shaving that had blown his way — spoke to Ben and 
Hennery in the soft and mild accents that seemed 
habitual to him: 

''Where did you two see sadder-lookin' fellers than 
I be?" 

''Over in Indianny," said Hennery, "there's a man so 
sad that you're one of these here laughin' jackasses 
'longside o' him." 

And, being encouraged. Hennery proceeded. 

This here feller (said Hennery McNabb) lived over 
in Brown County, Indianny, but he didn't come from 
there original. He come from down in Kentucky some- 
wheres and his name was Peevy, Bud Peevy. He was 
one of them long, lank fellers, like you, stranger, but 
he wasn't as long and his skin didn't sort o' wander 
around and wag itself like it was a tail. 

It was from the mountain districts he come. I was 
visitin' a brother of mine in the county-seat town of 
Brown County then, and this Bud Peevy was all swelled 
up with pride when I first knowed him. He was proud 
of two things. One was that he was the champeen 
corn-licker drinker in Kentucky. It was so he give 



106 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

himself out. And the other thing he was prouder yet of. 
It was the fact, if fact it was, that he was the Decidin' 
Vote in a national election — that there election you all 
remember, the first time Bryan run for President and 
McKinley was elected. 

This here Bud Peevy, you understand, wasn't really 
sad when I first knowed him: he only looked sad. His 
sadness that matched his innard feelin's up to his out- 
ward looks come on to him later. He was all-fired 
proud when I first knowed him. He went expandin' 
and extendin' of himself around everywheres tellin' 
them Indianny people how it was him, personal, that 
elected McKinley and saved the country from that 
there free-silver ruination. And the fuller he was of 
licker, the longer he made this here story, and the fuller, 
as you might say, of increditable strange events. 

Accordin' to him, on that election day in 1896 he 
hadn't planned to go and vote, for it was quite a ways 
to the polls from his place and his horse had fell lame 
and he didn't feel like walkin'. He figgered his district 
would go safe for McKinley, anyhow, and he wouldn't 
need to vote. He was a strong Republican, and when 
a Kentuckian is a Republican there ain't no stronger 
kind. 

But along about four o'clock in the afternoon a man 
comes ridin' up to his house with his horse all a lather 
of foam and sweat, and the horse was one of these here 
Kentucky thoroughbred race horses that must 'a' trav- 
elled nigh a mile a minute, to hear Bud Peevy tell of it, 
and that horse gives one groan like a human bein' and 



THE SADDEST MAN 107 

falls dead at Bud Peevy's feet afore the rider can say 
a word, and the rider is stunned. 

But Bud Peevy knowed him for a Republican county 
committeeman, and he poured some corn licker down 
his throat and he revived to life again. The feller yells 
to Bud as soon as he can get his breath to go to town 
and vote, quick, as the polls will close in an hour, and 
everybody else in that district has voted but Bud, 
and everyone has been kep' track of, and the vote is 
a tie. 

It's twelve miles to the pollin' place from Bud's farm 
in the hills and it is a rough country, but Bud strikes 
out runnin' acrost hills and valleys with three pints of 
corn licker in his pockets for to refresh himself from 
time to time. Bud, he allowed he was the best runner 
in Kentucky, and he wouldn't 'a' had any trouble, even 
if he did have to run acrost mountains and hurdle 
rocks, to make the twelve miles in an hour, but there 
was a lot of cricks and rivers in that country and there 
had been a gosh-a-mighty big rain the night before 
and all them cricks had turned into rivers and all them 
rivers had turned into roarin' oceans and Niagara 
catarac's. But Bud, he allows he is the best swimmer 
in Kentucky, and when he comes to a stream he takes 
a swig of corn licker and jumps in and swims acrost, 
boots and all — for he was runnin' in his big cowhides, 
strikin' sparks of fire from the mountains with every 
leap he made. 

Five times he was shot at by Democrats in the first six 
miles, and in the seventh mile the shootin' was almost 



108 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 



continual, and three or four times he was hit, but he 
kep' on. It seems the Democrats had got wind he had 
been sent for to turn the tide and a passel of 'em was 
out among the hills with rifles to stop him if they could. 
But he is in too much of a hurry to bandy words with 
'em, and he didn't have his gun along, which he re- 
gretted, he says, as he is the best gun fighter in Ken- 
tucky and he keeps on a-runnin' and a-swimmin' and 
a-jumpin' cricks and a-hurdlin' rocks with the bullets 
whizzin' around him and the lightnin' strikin' in his j 
path, for another big storm had come up, and no power 'J 
on this here earth could head him off, he says, for it i| 
come to him like a Voice from on High he was the pre- | 
ordained messenger and hero who was goin' to turn the J 
tide and save the country from this here free-silver I 
ruination. About two miles from the pollin' place, jist ,, 
as he jumps into the last big river, two men plunges : 
into the water after him with dirks, and one of them j 
he gets quick, but the other one drags Bud under the i 
water, stabbin' and jabbin' at him. There is a terrible \ 
stabbin' and stickin' battle way down under the water, j 
which is runnin' so fast that big stones the size of a cow \ 
is being rolled down stream, but Bud he don't mind theij 
stones, and he can swim under water as well as on top ' 
of it, he says, and he's the best knife fighter in Kentucky, i 
he says, and he soon fixes that feller and swims to shore ij 
with his knife in his teeth, and now he's only got one 'J 
more mountain to cross. '] 

But a kind of hurricane has sprung up and turned 
into a cyclone in there among the hills, and as he goes 



THE SADDEST MAN 109 

over the top of that last mountain, lickety-split, in the 

j dark and wind and rain, he blunders into a whole passel 

of rattlesnakes that has got excited by the elements. 

I But he fit his way through 'em, thankin' God he had 

nearly a quart of licker left to take for the eight or ten 

I bites he got, and next there rose up in front of him 

two of them big brown bears, and they was wild 

j with rage because the storm had been slingin' boulders 

at 'em. One of them bears he sticked with his knife 

I and made short work of, but the other one give him 

i quite a tussel. Bud says, afore he conquered it and 

' straddled it. And it was a lucky thing for him, he says, 

that he caught that bear in time, for he was gittin' a 

leetle weak with loss of blood and snake bites and bat- 

tlin' with the elements. Bud, he is the best rider in 

Kentucky, and it wasn't thirty seconds afore that bear 

knowed a master was a-ridin' of it, and in five minutes 

more Bud, he gallops up to that pollin' place, right 

through the heart of the hurricane, whippin' that bear 

with rattlesnakes to make it go faster, and he jumps off 

and cracks his boot heels together and gives a yell and 

casts the decidin' vote into the ballot box. He had 

made it with nearly ten seconds to spare. 

Well, accordin' to Bud Peevy that there one vote car- 
ries the day for McKinley in that county and not only 
in that county alone, but in that electorial district, and 
that electorial district gives McKinley the State of 
Kentucky, which no Republican had ever carried Ken- 
tucky for President for afore. And two or three other 
States was hangin' back keepin' their polls open late 



no THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

to see how Kentucky would go, and when it was flashed 
by telegraph all over the country that Bud Peevy was 
carryin' Kentucky for McKinley, them other States 
joined in with Kentucky and cast their electorial votes 

that-a-way, too, and McKinley was elected President. ^; 

So Bud figgers he has jist naturally elected that man * 

President and saved the country — he is the one that was - 
the Decidin' Vote for this whole derned republic. And, 

as I said, he loves to tell about it. It was in 1896 that ^ 

Bud saved the country and it was in 1900 that he moved 1 

to Brown County, Indianny, and started in with his ' 

oratin' about what a great man he was, and givin' his 'j 
political opinions about this, that and the other thing, 

like he might 'a* been President himself. Bein' the De- ' 

cidin' Vote that-a-way made him think he jist about ' 
run this country with his ideas. 

He's been hangin' around the streets in his new home, '! 
the county town of Brown County, for five or six weeks, 

in the summer of 1900, tellin' what a great feller he is, ' 

and bein' admired by everybody, when one day the J 

news comes that the U. S. Census for 1900 has been 1 

pretty nigh finished, and that the Centre of Population ! 

for the whole country falls in Brown County. Well, ;' 
you can understand that's calculated to make folks in 

that county pretty darned proud. ' 

But the proudest of them all was a feller by the ' 

name of Ezekiel Humphreys. It seems these here ^ 

government sharks had it figgered out that the centre ^ 

of population fell right on to where this here Zeke , 

Humphrey's farm was, four or five miles out of town. ] 



THE SADDEST MAN 111 

And Zeke, he figgers that he, himself, personal, has be- 
come the Centre of Population. 

Zeke hadn't never been an ambitious man. He 
hadn't never gone out and courted any glory like that, 
nor schemed for it nor thought of it. But he was a fel- 
ler that thought well enough of himself, too. He had 
been a steady, hard-workin' kind of man all his life, 
mindin' his own business and payin' his debts, and when 
this here glory comes to him, bein' chose out of ninety 
millions of people, as you might say, to be the one and 
only Centre of Population, he took it as his just due and 
was proud of it. 

"You see how the office seeks the man, if the man 
is worthy of it!" says Zeke. And everybody liked Zeke 
that knowed him, and was glad of his glory. 

Well, one day this here Decidin' Vote, Bud Peevy, 
comes to town to fill himself up on licker and tell how 
he saved the country, and he is surprised because he 
don't get nobody to listen to him. And pretty soon he 
sees the reason for it. There's a crowd of people on 
Main Street all gathered around Zeke Humphreys and 
all congratulatin' him on being the Centre of Popula- 
tion. And they was askin' his opinion on politics and 
things. Zeke is takin' it modest and sensible, but like 
a man that knowed he deserved it, too. Bud Peevy, he 
listens for a while, and he sniffs and snorts, but nobody 
pays any 'tention to him. Finally, he can't keep his 
mouth shut any longer, and he says: 

"Politics! Politics! To hear you talk, a fellow'd 
think you really got a claim to talk about politics!" 



112 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER j 

Zeke, he never was any trouble hunter, but he never 
run away from it, neither. ] 

"Mebby," says Zeke, not het up any, but right serious ' 
and determined-like, ' mebby you got more claim to 
talk about politics than I have?" \ 

*'I shore have," says Bud Peevy. ''I reckon I got i 
more claim to be hearkened to about politics than any ' 
other man in this here whole country. I'm the De- 
cidin' Vote of this here country, I am !" ^ 

"Well, gosh-ding my melts!" says Zeke Humphreys. 
"You ain't proud of yourself, nor nothin', are you?" 

"No prouder nor what I got a right to be," says Bud \ 
Peevy, "considcrin' what I done." 

"Oh, yes, you be!" says Zeke Humphreys. "You " 
been proudin' yourself around here for weeks now all ^ 
on account o' that decidin' vote business. And any- ^ 
body might 'a' been a Decidin' Vote. A Decidin' Vote ^ 
don't amount to nothin' 'longside a Centre of Popula- ^ 
tion." 

"Where would your derned population be if I hadn't \ 
went and saved this here country for 'em?" asks Bud 
Peevy. \ 

"Be?" says Zeke. "They'd be right where they be ^ 
now, if you'd never been born nor heard tell on, that's 
where they'd be. And I'd be the centre of 'em, jist 
like I be now!" 

"And what air you now?" says Bud Peevy, mighty ^ 
mean and insultin'-like. "You ain't nothin' but a ac-' 
cident, you ain't! What I got, I fit for and I earnt 
But you ain't nothin' but a happenin'!" 



THE SADDEST MAN 113 

Them seemed like mighty harsh words to Zeke, for 
he figgered his glory was due to him on account of the 
uprighteous life he always led, and so he says : 

''Mister, anybody that says I ain't nothin' but a hap- 
penin' is a liar." 

"I kin lick my weight in rattlesnakes," yells Bud 
Peevy, "and I've done it afore this! And I tells you 
once again, and flings it in your face, that you ain't 
nothin' but a accidental happenin'!" 

"You're a liar, then!" says Zeke. 

With that Bud Peevy jerks his coat off and spits on to 
his hands. 

"Set yo'self, man," says he; "the whirlwind's comin'!" 
And he makes a rush at Zeke. Bud is a good deal 
taller'n Zeke, but Zeke is sort o' bricky-red and chunky 
like a Dutch Reformed Church, and when this here 
Peevy comes on to him with a jump Zeke busts him one 
right on to the eye. It makes an uncheerful noise like 
I heard one time when Dan Lively, the butcher acrost 
the street there, hit a steer in the head with a sledge 
hammer. Bud, he sets down sudden, and looks sur- 
prised out of the eye that hadn't went to war yet. But 
he must 'a' figgered it was a accident for he don't set 
there long. He jumps up and rushes again. 

"I'm a wildcat! I'm a wildcat!" yells this here Bud. 

And Zeke, he collisions his fist with the other eye, 
and Bud sets down the second time. I won't say this 
here Zeke's hands was as big as a quarter of beef. The 
fact is, they wasn't that big. But I seen that fight my- 
self, and there was somethin' about the size and shape 



114 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

of his fist when it was doubled up that kind o' reminded 
me of a quarter of beef. Only his fists was harder than 
a quarter of beef. I guess Zeke's fists was about as 
hard as a hickory log that has been gettin' itself soaked 
and dried and seasoned for two or three years. I heard 
a story about Zeke and a mule that kicked him one 
time, but I didn't see it myself and I dunno' as it's all 
true. The word was that Zeke jist picked up that mule 
after it kicked him and frowned at it and told it if it 
ever done that again he would jist naturally pull off 
the leg that it kicked him with and turn it loose to hop 
away on three legs, and he cuffed that mule thorough 
and thoughtful and then he took it by one hind leg and 
fore leg and jounced it against a stone barn and told 
it to behave its fool self. It always seemed to me that 
story had been stretched a mite, but that was one of the 
stories they telled on Zeke. 

But this here Bud Peevy is game. He jumps up 
again with his two eyes lookin' like a skillet full of tripe 
and onions and makes another rush at Zeke. And this 
time he gets his hands on to Zeke and they rastles back 
and forth. But Bud, while he is a strong fellow, he 
ain't no ways as strong as a mule even if he is jist as 
sudden and wicked, so Zeke throws him down two or 
three times. Bud, he kicks Zeke right vicious and 
spiteful into the stomach, and when he done that Zeke 
began to get a little cross. So he throwed Bud down 
again and this time he set on top of him. 

''Now, then," says Zeke, bangin' Bud's head on to the 
sidewalk, "am I a happenin', or am I on purpose?" 



THE SADDEST MAN 115 

"Lemme up/' says Bud. "Leggo my whiskers and 
lemme up! You ain't licked me any, but them oY 
wounds I got savin' this country is goin' to bust open 
ag'in. I kin feel 'em bustin'." 

**I didn't start this/' says Zeke, *'but I'm a-goin' to 
finish it. Now, then, am I a accident, or was I meant?" 

''It's a accident you ever got me down," says Bud, 
"Whether you are a accident yourself or not/' 

Zeke jounces his head on the sidewalk some more 
and he says: "You answer better nor that! You go 
further! You tell me whether I'm on purpose or 
not!" 

"You was meant for somethin'," says Bud, "but you 
can't make me say what! You can bang my head off 
and I won't say what. Two or three of them bullets 
went into my neck right where you're bendin' it and I 
feel them ol' wounds bustin' open." 

"I don't believe you got no ol' wounds," says Zeke, 
"and I don't believe you ever saved no country and I'm 
gonna keep you here till I've banged some sense and 
politeness into your head." 

Bud, he gives a yell and a twist, and bites Zeke's 
wrist; Zeke slapped him some, and Bud ketched one of 
Zeke's fingers into his mouth and nigh bit it off afore 
Zeke got it loose. Zeke, he was a patient man and right 
thoughtful and judicious, but he had got kind o' cross 
when Bud kicked him into the stomach, and now this 
biting made him a leetle mite crosser. I cal'ated if 
Bud wasn't careful he'd get Zeke really riled up pretty 
soon and get his fool self hurt. Zeke, he takes Bud by 



116 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

the ears and slams his head till I thought the boards in 
that sidewalk was goin' to be busted. 

"Now, then," says Zeke, lettin' up for a minute, ''has 
the Centre of Population got a right to talk politics, or 
ain't he? You say he is got a right, or I mebby will 
fergit myself and get kind o' rough with you." 

'This here country I saved is a free country," says 
Bud Peevy, kind o' sick an' feeble, "and any one that 
lives in this here country I saved has got a right to talk 
politics, I reckon." 

Zeke, he took that for an answer and got good-natured 
and let Bud up. Bud, he wipes the blood off'n his face 
and ketches his breath an' gits mean again right away. 

"If my constitution hadn't been undermined savin' 
this here country," says Bud, "you never could 'a' got 
me down like that! And you ain't heard the end of 
this argyment yet, neither! I'm a-goin' for my gun, 
and we'll shoot it out!" 

But the townspeople interfered and give Bud to 
understand he couldn't bring no guns into a fight, like 
mebby he would 'a' done in them mountain regions he 
was always talkin' about ; an' told him if he was to start 
gunnin' around they would get up a tar-and-feather 
party and he would be the reception committee. They 
was all on Zeke's side and they'd all got kind o' tired 
listenin' to Bud Peevy, anyhow. Zeke was their own 
hometown man, and so they backed him. All that 
glory had come to Brown County and they wasn't goin' 
to see it belittled by no feller from another place. 

Bud Peevy, for two or three weeks, can't understand 



THE SADDEST MAN 117 

his glory has left him, and he goes braggin' around 
worse than ever. But people only grins and turns 
away; nobody will hark to him when he talks. When 
Bud tries to tell his story it gets to be quite the thing 
to look at him and say: "Lemme up! Leggo my whisk- 
ers ! Lemme up I" — like he said when Zeke Humphreys 
had him down. And so it was he come to be a byword 
around town. Kids would yell at him on the street, 
to plague him, and he would get mad and chase them 
kids, and when folks would see him runnin' after the 
kids they would yell: "Hey! Hey, Bud Peevy! You 
could go faster if you was to ride a bear!" Or else they 
would yell: "Whip yourself with a rattlesnake, Bud, 
and get up some speed!" 

His glory had been so big and so widespread for so 
long that when it finally went, there jist wasn't a darned 
thing left to him. His heart busted in his bosom. He 
wouldn't talk about nothin'. He jist slinked around. 
He was most pitiful because he wasn't used to misfor- 
tune like some people. 

And he couldn't pack up his goods and move away 
from that place. For he had come there to live with a 
married daughter and his son-in-law, and if he left there 
he would have to get a steady job working at somethin' 
and support himself. And Bud didn't want to risk 
that. For that wild run he made the time he saved the 
country left him strained clean down to the innards of 
his constitution, he says, and he wa'n't fit to work. But 
the thing that put the finishing touches on to him was 
when a single daughter that he had fell into love with 



118 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

Zeke Humphreys, who was a widower, and married her- 
self to him. His own flesh and blood has disowned him, 
Bud says. So he turns sad, and he was the saddest man 
I ever seen. He was sadder than you look to be, 
stranger. 

The stranger with the educated skin breathed a gentle 
sigh at the conclusion of Hennery's tale of the Deciding 
Vote and the Centre of Population, and then he said: 

"I don't doubt Bud Peevy was a sad man. But 
there's sadder things than what happened to Bud 
Peevy. There's things that touches the heart closer." 

"Stranger," said Ben Grevis, "you've said it! But 
Hennery, here, don't know anything about the heart 
bein' touched." 

Hennery McNabb seemed to enjoy the implication, 
rather than to resent it. Ben Grevis continued: 

"A sadder thing than what happened to Bud Peevy 
is goin' on a good deal nearer home than Indianny. 

"I ain't the kind of a feller that goes running to 
Indianny and to Kentucky and all over the known 
earth for examples of sadness, nor nothin' else. We 
got as good a country right here in Illinois as there is 
on top of the earth and I'm one that always sticks up 
for home folks and home industries. Hennery, here, 
ain't got any patriotism. And he ain't got any judg- 
ment. He don't know what's in front of him. But 
right here in our home county, not five miles from 
where we are, sets a case of sadness that is one of 
the saddest I ever seen or knowed about. 



THE SADDEST MAN 119 

"Hennery, here, he don't know how sad it is, for he's 
got no finer feelin's. A free thinker like Hennery can't 
be expected to have no finer feelin's. And this case is 
a case of a woman." 

''A woman!" sighed the stranger. "If a woman is 
mixed up with it, it could have finer feelin's and sad- 
ness in it!" And a ripple of melancholy ran over him 
from head to foot. 

This here woman (said Ben Grevis) lives over to 
Hickory Grove, in the woods, and everybody for miles 
around calls her Widder Watson. 

Widder Watson, she has buried four or five husbands, 
and you can see her any day that it ain't rainin' settin' 
in the door of her little house, smokin' of her corn-cob 
pipe, and lookin' at their graves and speculatin' and 
wonderin'. I talked with her a good deal from time to 
time durin' the last three or four years, and the things 
she is speculatin' on is life and death, and them hus- 
bands she has buried, and children. But that ain't 
what makes her so sad. It's wishin' for somethin' that, 
it seems like, never can be, that is makin' her so sad. 

She has got eighteen or twenty children, Widder Wat- 
son has, runnin' around them woods. Them woods is 
jist plumb full of her children. You wouldn't dare for 
to try to shoot a rabbit anywhere near them woods for 
fear of hittin' one. 

And all them children has got the most beautiful and 
peculiar names, that Widder Watson got out of these 
here drug-store almanacs, She's been a great reader 



120 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

all her life, Widder Watson has, but all her readin' has 
been done in these here almanacs. You know how 
many different kinds of almanacs there always are 
layin' around drug-stores, I guess. Well, every two or 
three months Widder Watson goes to town and gets a 
new bale of them almanacs and then she sets and reads 
'em. She goes to drug-stores in towns as far as twelve 
or fifteen miles away to keep herself supplied. 

She never cared much for readin' novels and story 
papers, she tells me. What she wants is somethin' that 
has got some true information in it, about the way the 
sun rises, and the tides in the oceans she has never saw, 
and when the eclipses is going to be, and different kinds 
of diseases new and old, and receipts for preserves and 
true stories about how this or that wonderful remedy 
come to be discovered. Mebby it was discovered by 
the Injuns in this country, or mebby it was discovered 
by them there Egyptians in the old country away back 
in King Pharaoh's time, and mebby she's got some of 
the same sort of yarbs and plants right there in her own 
woods. Well, Widder Watson, she likes that kind o' 
readin', and she knows all about the Seven Wonders of 
the World, and all the organs and ornaments inside the 
human carcass, and the kind o' pains they are likely 
to have and all about what will happen to you if the 
stars says this or that and how long the Mississippi 
River is and a lot of them old-time prophecies of signs 
and marvels what is to come to pass yet. You know 
about what the readin' is in them almanacs, mebby. 

Widder Watson, she has got a natural likin' for fine 



THE SADDEST MAN 121 

words, jist the same as some has got a gift for hand- 
paintin' or playin' music or recitin' pieces of poetry or 
anything like that. And so it was quite natural, when 
her kids come along, she names 'em after the names 
in her favourite readin' matter. And she gets so she 
thinks more of the names of them kids than of nearly 
anything else. I ain't sayin' she thinks more of the 
names than she does of the kids, but she likes the names 
right next to the kids. Every time she had a baby she 
used to sit and think for weeks and weeks, so she tells 
me, for to get a good name for that baby, and select and 
select and select out of them almanacs. 

Her oldest girl, that everybody calls Zody, is named 
Zodiac by rights. And then there's Carty, whose real 
name is Cartilege, and Anthy, whose full name is An- 
thrax, and so on. There's Peruna and Epidermis and 
Epidemic and Pisces. 

1 dunno as I can remember all them swell names. 
There's Perry, whose real name is Perihelion, and there's 
Whitsuntide and Tonsillitis and Opodeldoc and a lot 
more — I never could remember all them kids. 

And there ain't goin' to be no more on 'em, for the 
fact of the matter seems to be that Widder Watson 
ain't likely to ever get another husband. It's been 
about four years since Jim Watson, her last one, died, 
and was buried in there amongst the hickory second- 
growth and hazel bushes, and since that day there ain't 
nobody come along that road a-courtin' Widder Wat- 
son. And that's what makes her sad. She can't un- 
derstand it, never havin' been without a husband for so 



122 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER \ 

long before, and she sets and grieves and grieves and 
smokes her corn-cob pipe and speculates and grieves 
some more. 

Now, don't you get no wrong idea about Widder Wat- 
son. She ain't so all-fired crazy about men. It ain't ' 
that. That ain't what makes her grieve. She is sad ' 
because she wants another baby to pin a name to. 

For she has got the most lovely name out of a new 
almanac for that there kid that will likely never be - 
born, and she sets there day after day, and far into the ^ 
night, lookin' at them graves in the brush, and talkin' ■ 
to the clouds and stars, and sayin' that name over and 
over to herself, and sighin' and weepin' because that 
lovely name will be lost and unknown and wasted for- ' 
evermore, with no kid to tack it on to. ' 

And she hopes and yearns and grieves for another 
man to marry her and wonders why none of 'em never 
does. Well, I can see why they don't. The truth is, 
Widder Watson don't fix herself up much any more. ' 
She goes barefooted most of the time in warm weather, ' 
and since she got so sad-like she don't comb her hair ' 
much. And them corn-cob pipes of hern ain't none too \ 
savory. But I 'spose she thinks of herself as bein' jist ' 
the same way she was the last time she took the trouble 
to look into the lookin' glass and she can't understand 
it. 

*'Damn the men, Ben," she says to me, the last time 
I was by there, 'Vhat's the matter with 'em all? Ain't 
they got no sense any more? I never had no trouble 
ketchin' a man before this! But here I been settin' 



, THE SADDEST MAN 123 

for three or four years, with eighty acres of good land 

lacrost the road there, and a whole passel o' young uns 

to work it, and no man comes to court me. There was 

la feller along here two-three months ago I did have 

some hopes on. He come a-palaverin' and a-blarneyin' 

i along, and he stayed to dinner and I made him some 

apple dumplin's. and he et an' et and palavered. 

ll *'But it turned out he was really makin' up to that 

!'gal, Zody, of mine. It made me so darned mad, Ben, I 

irunned him off the place with Jeff Parker's shotgun that 

fis hangin' in there, and then I took a hickory sprout to 

that there Zody and tanned her good, for encouragin' 

of him. You remember Jeff Parker, Ben? He was my 

second. You wasn't thinkin' of gettin' married ag'in 

yourself, was you, Ben?" 

; I told her I wasn't. That there eighty acres is good 
land, and they ain't no mortgages on it, nor nothin', 
but the thought of bein' added to that collection in 
amongst the hazel brush and hickory sprouts is enough 
tor to hold a man back. And the Widder Watson, she 
don't seem to realize she orter fix herself up a little mite. 
But I'm sorry for her, jist the same. There she sets 
and mourns, sayin' that name over and over to herself, 
I and a-grievin' and a-hopin', and all the time she knows 
I it ain't much use to hope. And a sadder sight than you 
will see over there to Hickory Grove ain't to be found 
m the whole of the State of Illinois. 

"That is a mighty sad picture you have drawed," 
i said the stranger, when Ben Grevis had finished, "but 



124 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

Vm a sadder man for a man than that there woman is 
for a woman." 

He wrinkled all over, he almost grinned, if one could 
think of him as grinning, when he mentioned "that , 
there woman/' It was as if he tasted some ulterior 
jest, and found it bitter, in connection with "that there . 
woman/' After a pause, in which he sighed several 
times, he remarked in his tired and gentle voice: 

"There's two kinds of sadness, gentlemen. There is ' 
the melancholy sadness that has been with you for so ' 
long that you have got used to it and kind o' enjoy it 
in a way. And then there's the kind o' sadness where 
you go back on yourself, where you make your own mis- " 
takes and fall below your own standards, and that is a 
mighty bitter kind of sadness." 

He paused again, while the skin wreathed itself into 
funeral wreaths about his face, and then he said, im- 
pressively: 

"Both of them kinds of sadness I have known. First 
I knowed the melancholy kind, and now I know the 
bitter kind/' 

The first sadness that I had lasted for years (said 
the stranger with the strange skin). It was of the mel- 
ancholy kind, tender and sort o' sweet, and if 1 had 
been the right kind of a man I would 'a' stuck to it and 
kept it. But I went back on it. I turned my face 
away from it. And in going back on it 1 went back 
on all them old, sad, sweet memories, like the songs 
tell about, that was my better self. And that is what 



THE SADDEST MAN 125 

i caused the sadness I am in the midst of now. It's the 
' feelin' that I done wrong in turnin' away from all them 
memories that makes me as sad as you see me to-day. 
! I will first tell you how the first sadness come on to me, 
I and secondly I will tell you how I got the sadness I am 
I in the midst of now. 

Gentlemen, mebby you have noticed that my skin is 
! kind o' different from most people's skin. That is a 
gift, and there was a time when I made money off'n 
that gift. And I got another gift. I'm longer and 
slimmer than most persons is. And besides them two 
gifts, I got a third gift. I can eat glass, gentlemen, and 
it don't hurt me none. I can eat glass as natural and 
easy as a chicken eats gravel. And them three gifts is 
my art. 

I was an artist in a side-show for years, gentlemen, 
and connected with one of the biggest circuses in the 
world. I could have my choice of three jobs with any 
show I was with, and there ain't many could say that. I 
could be billed as the India Rubber Man, on account of 
my skin, or I could be billed as the Living Skeleton, on 
account of my framework, or I could be billed as the 
Glass Eater. And once or twice I was billed as all three. 
But mostly I didn't bother much with eating glass or 
being a Living Skeleton. Mostly I stuck to being an 
India Rubber Man. It always seemed to me there was 
more art in that, more chance to show talent and genius. 
The gift that was given to me by Providence I de- 
veloped and trained till I could do about as much with 
my skin as most people can with their fingers. It takes 



126 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

constant work and practice to develop a skin, even when 
Nature has been kind to you like she has to me. 

For years I went along contented enough, seein' the 
country and being admired by young and old, and 
wondered at and praised for my gift and the way I 
had turned it into an art, and never thinkin' much of 
women nor matrimony nor nothing of that kind. 

But when a man's downfall is put off, it is harder 
when it comes. When I fell in love I fell good and 
hard. I fell into love with a pair of Siamese twins. 
These here girls was tied together somewheres about 
the waist line with a ligament of some kind, and there 
wasn't no fake about it — they really was tied. On ac- 
count of motives of delicacy I never asked 'em much 
about that there ligament. The first pair of twins 
like that who was ever on exhibition was from Siam, so 
after that they called all twins of that kind Siamese 
twins. But these girls wasn't from none of them out- 
landish parts; they was good American girls, born right 
over in Ohio, and their names was Jones. Hetty Jones 
and Netty Jones was their names. 

Hetty, she was the right-hand twin, and Netty was 
the left-hand twin. And you never seen such lookers 
before in your life, double nor single. They was ex- 
actly alike and they thought alike and they talked 
alike. Sometimes when I used to set and talk to 'em 
I felt sure they was just one woman. If I could 'a' 
looked at 'em through one of these here stereoscopes 
they would 'a' come together and been one woman. 
I never had any idea about 'em bein' two women. 



THE SADDEST MAN 127 

Well, I courted 'em, and they was mighty nice to me, 
both of 'em. I used to give 'em candy and flowers and 
little presents and I would set and admire 'em by the 
hour. I kept gettin' more and more into love with 
them. And I seen they was gettin' to like me, too. 

So one day I outs with it. 

"Will you marry me?" says I. 

"Yes," says Hetty. And, "Yes," says Netty. Both 
in the same breath! And then each one looked at the 
other one, and they both looked at me, and they says, 
both together : 

"Which one of us did you ask?" 

"Why," says I, kind o' flustered, "there ain't but one of 
you, is they? I look on you as practically one woman." 

"The idea!" says Netty. 

"You orter be ashamed of yourself," says Hetty. 

"You didn't think," says Netty, "that you could 
marry both of us, did you?" 

Well, all I had really thought up to that time was 
that I was in love with 'em, and just as much in love 
with one as with the other, and I popped the question 
right out of my heart and sentiments without thinking 
much one way or the other. But now I seen there was 
going to be a difficulty. 

"Well," I says, "if you want to consider yourself as 
two people, I suppose it would be marryin' both of you. 
But I always thought of you as two hearts that beat 
as one. And I don't see no reason why I shouldn't 
marry the two of you, if you want to hold out stubborn 
that you are two." 



I 



128 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 



"For my part/' says Hetty, '1 think you are insult- j 
ing." 

''You must choose between us/' says Netty. 

''I would never/' says Hetty, "consent to any Mor- 
monous goings-on of that sort/' 

They still insisted they was two people till finally I 
kind o' got to see their side of the argyment. But how 
was I going to choose between them when no matter 
which one I chooses she was tied tight to the other one? 

We agreed to talk it over with the Fat Lady in that 
show, who had a good deal of experience in concerns 
of the heart and she had been married four or five times 
and was now a widder, having accidental killed her last 
husband by rolling over on him in her sleep. She says 
to me: 

"How happy you could be with either, Skinny, were 
t'other dear charmer away!" 

"This ain't no jokin' matter, Dolly," I tells her. 
"We come for serious advice/' 

"Skinny, you old fool," she says, "there's an easy 
way out of this difficulty. All you got to do is get a 
surgeon to cut that ligament and then take your 
choice." 

"But I ain't really got any choice," I says, "for I 
loves 'em both and I loves 'em equal. And I don't be- 
lieve in tamperin' with Nature." 

"It ain't legal for you to marry both of 'em," says the 
Fat Lady. 

"It ain't moral for me to cut 'em asunder," I says. 

I had a feelin' all along that if they was cut asunder 



THE SADDEST MAN 129 

trouble of some kind would follow. But both Hetty 
and Netty was strong for it. They refused to see me or 
have anything to do with me, they sent me word, till I 
give up what they called the insultin' idea of marryin' 
both of 'em. They set and quarrelled with each other 
all the time, the Fat Lady told me, because they was 
jealous of each other. Bein' where they couldn't get 
away from each other even for a minute, that jealousy 
must have et into them something unusual. And fin- 
ally, 1 knuckled under. I let myself be overrulled. I 
seen I would lose both of 'em unless I made a choice. 
So I sent 'em word by the Fat Lady that I would choose. 
But I knowed deep in my heart all the time that no good 
would come of it. You can't go against Scripter and 
prosper; and the Scripter says: "What God has joined 
together, let no man put asunder." 

Well, we fixed it up this way: I was to pay for that 
there operation, having money saved up for to do it 
with, and then I was to make my choice by chance. 
The Fat Lady says to toss a penny or something. 

But I always been a kind of a romantic feller, and I 
says to myself I will make that choice in some kind of 
a romantic way. So first 1 tried one of these ouija 
boards, but all I get is "Etty, Etty, Etty," over and 
over again, and whether the ouija left off an H or an N 
there's no way of telling. The Fat Lady, she says: 
"Why don't you count 'em out, like kids do, to find out 
who is It?" 

"How do you mean?" I asks her. 

"Why," says she, "by saying, 'Eeny meeny, miney, 



130 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

mo!' or else 'Monkey, monkey, bottle of beer, how many 
monkeys have we here?' or something like that." 

But that ain't romantic enough to suit me and I re- 
member how you pluck a daisy and say: "She loves 
me! She loves me not!" And I think I will get an 
American beauty rose and do it that way. Well, they 
had the operation, and it was a success. And about a 
week later I'm to go to the hospital and tell 'em which 
one has been elected to the holy bonds of matrimony. 
I gets me a rose, one of the most expensive that money 
can buy in the town we was in, and when I arrive at the 
hospital I start up the front steps pluckin' the leaves 
off and sayin' to myself: "Hetty she is! Netty she is! 
Hetty she is!" — and so on. But I never got that rose 
all plucked. 

I knowed all along that it was wrong to put asunder 
what God had joined together, and I orter stuck to the 
hunch I had. You can't do anything to a freak with- 
out changing his or her disposition some way. You 
take a freak that was born that way and go to operat- 
ing on him, and if he is good-natured he'll turn out a 
grouch, or if he was a grouch he'll turn out good- 
natured. 1 knowed a dog-faced boy one time who was 
the sunniest critter you ever seen. But his folks got 
hold of a lot of money and took him out of the business 
and had his features all slicked up and made over, and 
what he gained in looks he lost in temper and dispo- 
sition. Any tinkering you do around artists of that 
class will change their sentiments every time. 

I never got that rose all plucked. At the top of the 



THE SADDEST MAN 131 

steps I was met by Hetty and Netty, just comin' out 
of the hospital and not expectin' to see me. With one 
of them was a young doctor that worked in the hos- 
pital and with the other was a patient that had just 
got well. They explained to me that as soon as they 
had that operation their sentiments toward me changed. 
Before, they had both loved me. Afterwards, neither 
one of 'em did. They was right sorry about it, they 
said, but they had married these here fellows that morn- 
ing in the hospital, with a double wedding, and was now 
starting off on their wedding trips, and their husbands 
would pay back the operation money as soon as they 
had earned it and saved it up. 

Well, I was so flabbergasted that my skin stiffened 
up on me, and it stayed stiff for the rest of that day. 
I never said a word, but I turned away from there a sad 
man with a broken heart in my bosom. And I quit 
bein' an artist. I didn't have the sperrit to be in a 
show any more. 

And through all the years since then I been a sad- 
dened man. But as time went by there come a kind of 
sweetness into that sadness, too. It is better to have 
loved and lost than never to have loved at all, like the 
poet says. I was one of the saddest men in the world, 
but I sort o' enjoyed it, after a few years. And all 
them memories sort o' kept me a better man. 

I orter stuck to that kind of sweet sadness. I orter 
knowed that if I went back on all them beautiful memo- 
ries of them girls something bitter would come to me. 

But I didn't, gentlemen. I went back on all that 



132 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

sentiment and that tenderness. I betrayed all them 
beautiful memories. Five days ago, I went and mar- 
ried. Yes, sir, I abandoned all that sweet recollection. 
And I been livin' in hell ever since. I been reproachin' 
myself day and night for not provin' true and trust- 
worthy to all that romantic sadness I had all them 
years. It was a sweet sadness, and I wasn't faithful to 
it. And so long as I live now I will have this here bitter 
sadness. 

The stranger got up and sighed and stretched him- 
self. He took a fresh chew of tobacco, and began to 
crank his flivver. 

"Well," said Ben Grevis, ''that is a sad story. But 
I don't know as you're sadder, at that, than the Widder 
Watson is." 

The stranger spat colourfully into the road, and 
again the faint semblance of a smile, a bitter smile, 
wreathed itself about his mouth. 

"Yes, I be!" he said, "I be a sadder person than the 
Widder Watson. It was her I married!" 



DOGS AND BOYS 
(As told by the dog) 

If you are a dog of any sense, you will pick you out 
a pretty good sort of a boy and stick to him. These 
dogs that are always adopting one boy after another get 
a bad name among the humans in the end. And you'd 
better keep in with the humans, especially the grown-up 
ones. Getting your scraps off a plate at the back door 
two or three times a day beats hunting rabbits and 
ground-squirrels for a living. 

What a dog wants is a boy anywhere from about nine 
to about sixteen years old. A boy under nine hasn't 
enough sense, as a rule, to be any company for an in- 
telligent dog. And along about sixteen they begin to 
dress up and try to run with the girls, and carry on in a 
way to make a dog tired. There are exceptions of 
course — one of the worst mistakes some dogs make is to 
suppose that all boys are alike. That isn't true; you'll 
find just as much individuality among boys as there is 
among us dogs, if you're patient enough to look for it 
and have a knack for making friends with animals. 
But you must remember to be kind to a boy if you're 
going to teach him anything; and you must be careful 
not to frighten him. 

133 



134 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

At the same time, you must keep a boy in his place 
at once. My boy — Freckles Watson is his name — 
understands just how far he can go with me. But 
some dogs have to give their boys a lesson now and then. 
Jack Thompson, who is a fine, big, good-natured dog, 
has a boy like that. The boy's name is Squint — Squint 
Thompson, he is — and he gets a little overbearing at 
times. I remember one Saturday afternoon last 
summer in particular. There were a lot of us dogs and 
boys fooling around up at Clayton's swimming-hole, 
including some stray boys with no dogs to look after 
them,when Squint began to show oflF by throwing sticks 
into the water and making Jack swim in and get 'em. 
Jack didn't mind that, but after a while he got pretty 
tired and flopped down on the grass, and wouldn't 
budge. 

''Grab him by the tail and the scruff of the neck, and 
pitch him in. Squint," says my boy. Freckles, 'it's a 
lot of fun to duck a dog." 

Squint went over to where Jack was lying and took 
hold of the scruff of Jack's neck. Jack winked at me 
in his good-natured way, and made a show of pulling 
back some, but finally let Squint pitch him into the 
deepest part of the swimming-hole. His head went 
clear under — which is a thing no dog likes, let alone 
being picked up that way and tossed about. Every boy 
there set up a shout, and when Jack scrambled up the 
bank, wagging his tail and shaking the water off himself, 
the humans all yelled, "Sling him in again, Squint!" 

Jack trotted over to where he had a bone planted at 



DOGS AND BOYS 135 

the foot of a walnut tree, and began to dig for it. 
Squint followed, intending to sling him in again. I 
wondered if old Jack would stand for any more of it. 
Jack didn't; but before he got that fool boy to give up 
his idea he had to pretend like he was actually trying to 
bite him. He threw a good scare into the whole bunch 
of them, and then made out like he'd seen a rabbit off 
through the trees, and took after it. Mutt Mulligan 
and I went with him, and all the boys followed, naked, 
and whooping like Indians, except two that stayed be- 
hind to tie knots in shirts. When we three dogs had 
given the whole bunch of them the slip, we lay down 
in the grass and talked. 

"Some day," says Jack to me, "Vm afraid I'm really 
going to have to bite that Squint boy. Spot." 

''Don't do it," says I, "he's just a fool boy, and he 
doesn't really mean anything by it." 

"The thing to do," says Mutt Mulligan, "is to fire 
him — just turn him loose without a dog to his name, 
and pick up another boy somewhere." 

"But I don't like to give Squint up," says Jack, very 
thoughtful. "I think it's my duty to stick to him, even 
if I have to bite him once or twice to keep him in his 
place." 

"You see," Jack went on, "I'm really fond of Squint. 
I've had him three years now, and I'm making a regular 
boy of him. He was a kind of a sissy when I took charge 
of him. His folks made him wear long yaller curls, 
and they kept him in shoes and stockings even in the 
summer-time, and they dressed him up in little blouses, 



136 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

and, say, fellows, you'd never guess what they called 
him!'' 

"What?" says I. 

"Percival," says Jack. ''And they wouldn't let him 
fight. Well, I've seen him turn into a real boy, a bit 
at a time, and I think it's up to me to stick to the job 
and help with his education. He chews tobacco now," 
says Jack very proudly, "and he can smoke a corn- 
cob pipe without getting sick; and I'll tell you what, 
Spot, he can lick that Freckles boy of yours to a 
frazzle." 

"Huh!" says I, "there's no boy of his age in town 
that dast to knock a chip off that Freckles boy's shoul- 
der." 

"Yes, sir," says Jack, ignoring my remark, "that 
Squint has turned into some kid, believe me! And the 
first time I saw him he was a sight. It was about dusk, 
one summer afternoon three years ago, and he was sit- 
ting down in the grass by the side of the road six or 
seven miles from town, crying and talking to himself. 
I sat down a little way off and listened. He had run 
away from home, and I didn't blame him any, either. 
Besides the curls and shoes and stockings I have men- 
tioned, there were other persecutions. He never went 
fishing, for instance, unless his father took him. He 
didn't dast to play marbles for keeps. They wouldn't 
let him have a Flobert rifle, nor even a nigger shooter. 
There were certain kids he wasn't allowed to play with 
— they were too common and dirty for him, his folks 
said. So he had run off to go with a circus. He had 



DOGS AND BOYS 137 

hacked off his Fauntleroy curls before he started only 
he hadn't got 'em very even; but he had forgot to in- 
quire which way to go to find a circus. He'd walked 
and walked, and the nearest thing to a circus he had 
found was a gipsy outfit, and he had got scared of an 
old man with brass rings in his ears, and run, and run, 
and run. He'd slung his shoes and stockings away when 
he started because he hated 'em so, and now he had a 
stone bruise, and he was lost besides. And it was 
getting dark. 

''Well, I felt sorry for that boy. I sat there and 
watched him, and the idea came to me that it would 
be a Christian act to adopt him. He wasn't a sissy at 
heart — he had good stuff in him, or he wouldn't have 
run away. Besides, I wanted a change; I'd been work- 
ing for a farmer, and I was pretty sick of that." 

"It's no life for a dog with any sporting instinct," 
I said, "farm life isn't. I've tried it. They keep you 
so infernally busy with their cows and sheep and things; 
and I knew one farm dog that had to churn twice a 
week. They stuck him in a treadmill and made 
him." 

"A farm's no worse than living in a city," said Mutt 
Mulligan. "A city dog ain't a real dog; he's either 
an outcast under suspicion of the police, or a mama's 
pet with ribbons tied around his neck." 

"You can't tell me," says Jack. "I know. A coun- 
try town with plenty of boys in it, and a creek or river 
near by, is the only place for a dog. Well, as I was say- 
ing, I felt sorry for Percival, and we made friends. 



138 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

Pretty soon a man that knew him came by in a buggy, 
going to town. He was a doctor, and he stopped and 
asked Percival if he wasn't pretty far from home. 
Percival told him he'd left home for good and for all; 
but he sniffled when he said it, and the doctor put him 
into his buggy and drove him to town. I drilled along 
behind. It had been dark quite a while when we got 
home, and Percival's folks were scared half to death. 
His mother had some extra hysterics when she saw his 
hair. 

" 'Where on earth did you get that ornery-looking 
yellow mongrel?' says Percival's father when he caught 
sight of me. 

" That's my dog,' says Percival. 'I'm going to keep 
him.' 

" 'I won't have him around,' says his mother. 

"But Percival spunked up and said he'd keep me, 
and he'd get his hair shingled tight to his head, or else 
the next time he ran away he'd make a go of it. He got 
a licking for that remark, but they were so glad to get 
him back they let him keep me. And from that time 
on Percival began to get some independence about him. 
He ain't Percival now; he's Squint." 

It's true that a dog can help a lot in a boy's education. 
And I'm proud of what I've done for Freckles. I will 
always remember one awful time I had with him, 
though. I didn't think he'd ever pull through it. All 
of a sudden he got melancholy — out of sorts and dreamy. 
I couldn't figure out what was the matter with him at 
first. But I watched him close, and finally I found 



DOGS AND BOYS 139 

out he was in love. He was feeling the disgrace of 
being in love pretty hard, too; but he was trying not to 
show it. The worst part of it was, he was in love with 
his school-teacher. She was a Miss Jones, and an old 
woman — tv/enty-two or twenty-three years old, she 
was. 

Squint and Freckles had a fight over it when Squint 
found out. Squint came over to our place one 
night after supper and whistled Freckles out. H^ 
says: 

"Say, Freckles, I seen you put an apple on Miss 
Jones's desk this morning." 

"You're a liar," says Freckles, "and you dastn't back 
it." 

"I dast," says Squint. 

"Dastn't," says Freckles. 

'*Dast," says Squint. 

"Back it then," says Freckles. 

"Well, then, you're another," says Squint. Which 
backed it. 

Then Freckles, he put a piece of wood on to his 
shoulder, and said: 

"You don't dast to knock that chip off." 

"I dast," says Squint. 

"You dastn't," says Freckles. 

Squint made a little push at it. Freckles dodged, and 
it fell off. "There," says Squint, "I knocked it off." 

"You didn't; it fell off." 

"Did." 

"Didn't neither." 



140 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

"Did teether. Just put it on again, and see if I don't 
dast to knock it off." 

"I don't have to put it on again, and you ain't big 
enough to make me do it," says Freckles. 

"I can too make you." 

"Can't." 

"Huh, you can't run any sandy over me!" 

"I'll show you whether I can or not!" 

"Come on, then, over back of the Baptist Church, and 
show me." 

"No, I won't fight in a graveyard." 

"Yah! Yah! Yah! — 'fraid of a graveyard at night! 
Fraid-cat! Fraid-cat! Fraid-cat!" 

There isn't any kid will stand for that, so they went 
over to the graveyard back of the Baptist Church. 
It was getting pretty dark, too. I followed them, and 
sat down on a grave beside a tombstone to watch the 
fight. I guess they were pretty much scared of that 
graveyard, both of those boys; but us dogs had dug 
around there too much, making holes after gophers, 
and moles, and snakes for me to mind it any. They 
hadn't hit each other more than half a dozen times, 
those boys, when a flea got hold of me right in the mid- 
dle of my back, up toward my neck — the place I never 
can reach, no matter how hard I dig and squirm. It 
wasn't one of my own fleas, by the way it bit; it must 
have been a tramp flea that had been starved for weeks. 
It had maybe come out there with a funeral a long time 
before and got lost off of someone, and gone without 
food ever since; and while I was rolling around and 



DOGS AND BOYS 141 

twisting, and trying to get at it, I bumped against that 
tombstone with my whole weight. It was an old slab, 
and loose, and it fell right over in the grass with a thud. 
The boys didn't know I was there, and when the tomb- 
stone fell and I jumped, they thought ghosts were after 
them, though I never heard of a ghost biting anybody 
yet. It was all I could do to keep up with those boys 
for the next five minutes, and I can run down a rabbit. 
When they stopped, they were half a mile away, on 
the schoolhouse steps, hanging on to each other for com- 
fort. But, after a while they got over their scare, and 
Squint said: 

'There ain't any use in you denying that apple. 
Freckles; two others, besides me, not counting a girl, 
saw you put it there." 

"Well," said Freckles, ''it's nobody's business." 

"But what I can't make out," says Squint, "is what 
became of the red pepper. We knew you wasn't the 
kind of a softy that would bring apples to teacher un- 
less they was loaded with cayenne pepper, or something 
like that. So we waited around after school to see what 
would happen when she bit into it. But she just set 
at her desk and eat it all up, and slung the core in the 
stove, and nothing happened." 

"That's funny," says Freckles. And he didn't say 
anything more. 

"Freckles," says Squint, "I don't believe you put any 
red pepper into that apple." 

"I did," says Freckles. "You're a liar!" 

"Well," says Squint, "what become of it, then?" 



142 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

'That's none of your business, what become of it," 
says Freckles. "What's it to you what become of it? 
How do I know what become of it?" 

"Freckles," says Squint, "I believe you're stuck on 
teacher." 

"You're a liar!" yells Freckles. And this time he 
was so mad he hit Squint without further words. They 
had a beauty of a fight, but finally Freckles got Squint 
down on the gravel path, and bumped his head up and 
down in the gravel. 

"Now," says he, "did you see any apple?" 

"No," says Squint, "I didn't see any apple." 

"If you had seen one, would there have been pepper 
in it?" 

"There would have been — le'me up. Freckles." 

"Am I stuck on teacher?" 

"You ain't stuck on anybody — ouch, Freckles, le'me 
up!" 

Freckles let him up, and then started back toward 
home, walking on difi'erent sides of the street. About 
half-way home Freckles crossed the street, and said: 

"Squint, if I tell you something, you won't tell?" 

"I ain't any snitch, Freckles, and you know it." 

"You won't even tell the rest of the Dalton Gang?" 

"Nope." 

"Cross your heart and hope to die?" 

"Sure." 

"Well, set down on the grass here, and I'll tell you/' 

They set down, and Freckles says: 

"Honest, Squint, it's true — I did take her that apple 



DOGS AND BOYS 143 

this morning, and Tm stuck on her, and there wasn't 
any pepper in it." 

"Gee, Freckles!" says Squint. 

Freckles only drew in a deep breath. 

"I'm awful sorry for you. Freckles," says Squint, 
"honest, I am." 

"You always been a good pal. Squint," says Freckles. 

"Ain't there anything can be done about it?" 

"Nope," says Freckles. 

"The Dalton Gang could make things so hot for her 
she'd have to give up school," says Squint, very hope- 
ful. "If you didn't see her any more, you'd maybe get 
over it. Freckles." 

"No, Squint, I don't want her run out." 

"Don't want her run out! Say, Freckles, you don't 
mean to say you like being in love with her?" 

"Well," says Freckles, "if I did like it, that would be 
a good deal of disgrace, wouldn't it?" 

"Gosh darn her!" says Squint. 

"Well, Squint," says Freckles, "if you call me a softy, 
I'll lick you again; but honest, I do kind of like it." 

And after that disgrace there wasn't anything more 
either of them could say. And that disgrace ate into 
him more and more; it changed him something awful. 
It took away all his spirit by degrees. He got to be a 
different boy — sort of mooned around and looked fool- 
ish. And he'd blush and giggle if any one said "Hello" 
to him. I noticed the first bad sign one Saturday 
when his father told him he couldn't go swimming until 
after he had gone over the whole patch and picked the 



144 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

bugs off of all the potatoes. He didn't kick nor play 
sick; he didn't run away; he stayed at home and bugged 
those potatoes; he bugged them very hard and savage; 
he didn't do two rows, as usual, and then sneak off 
through the orchard with me — no, sir, he hugged 'em all! 
I lay down at the edge of the patch and watched him, 
and thought of old times, and the other dogs and boys 
down at the creek, or maybe drowning out gophers, or 
getting chased by Cy Smith's bull, or fighting out a 
bumblebee's nest and putting mud on the stung places, 
and it all made me fell mighty sad and downcast. Next 
day was Sunday, and they told him he'd get a licking 
if he chased off after Sunday-school and played base- 
ball out to the fair-grounds — and he didn't; he came 
straight home, without even stopping back of the liv- 
ery-stable to watch the men pitch horseshoes. And 
next day was Monday, and he washed his neck with- 
out being told, and he was on time at school, and he 
got his grammar lesson. And worse than that before 
the day was over, for at recess-time the members of the 
Dalton Gang smoked a Pittsburgh stogie, turn and turn 
about, out behind the coal-house. Freckles rightly 
owned a fifth interest in that stogie, but he gave his 
turns away without a single puff. Some of us dogs 
always hung around the school-yard at recess-times, 
and I saw that myself, and it made me feel right bad; 
it wasn't natural. And that night he went straight 
home from school, and he milked the cow and split the 
kindling wood without making a kick, and he washed 
his feet before he went to bed without being made to. 



DOGS AND BOYS 145 

No, sir, it wasn't natural. And he felt his disgrace 
worse and worse, and lost his interest in life more and 
more as the days went by. One afternoon when I 
couldn't get him interested in pretending I was going 
to chew up old Bill Patterson, I knew there wasn't any- 
thing would take him out of himself. Bill was the town 
drunkard, and all of us dogs used to run and bark at 
him when there were any humans looking on. I never 
knew how we got started at it, but it was the fashion. 
We didn't have anything against old Bill either, but 
we let on like we thought he was a tough character; 
that is, if any one was looking at us. If we ever met 
old Bill toward the edge of town, where no one could 
see us, we were always friendly enough with him, too. 
Bill liked dogs, and used to be always trying to pet us, 
and knew just the places where a dog liked to be 
scratched, but there wasn't a dog in town would be 
seen making up to him. We'd let him think maybe 
we were going to be friendly, and smell and sniff 
around him in an encouraging sort of a way, like 
we thought maybe he was an acquaintance of ours, and 
then old Bill would get real proud and try to pat our 
heads, and say: 'The dogs all know old Bill, all right 
— ^yes, sir! They know who's got a good heart and who 
ain't. May be an outcast, but the dogs know — ^yes, 
sir!" And when he said that we'd growl and back off, 
and circle around him, and bristle our backs up, and act 
like we'd finally found the man that robbed our family's 
chicken-house last week, and run in and snap at Bill's 
legs. Then all the boys and other humans around 



146 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

would laugh. I reckon it was kind of mean and hypo- 
critical in us dogs, too; but you've got to keep the 
humans jollied up, and the coarsest kind of jokes is the 
only kind they seem to appreciate. But even when I 
put old Bill through his paces, that Freckles boy didn't 
cheer up any. 

The worst of it was that Miss Jones had made up 
her mind to marry the Baptist minister, and it was 
only a question of time before she'd get him. Every 
dog and human in our town knew that. Folks used 
to talk it over at every meal, or out on the front porches 
in the evenings, and wonder how much longer he would 
hold out. And Freckles used to listen to them talking, 
and then sneak off alone and sit down with his chin in 
his hands and study it all out. The Dalton Gang — 
Squint had told the rest of them, each promising not 
to tell — was right sympathetic at first. They offered 
to burn the preacher's house down if that would do 
any good. But Freckles said no, leave the preacher 
alone. It wasn't his fault — everyone knew he wouldn't 
marry Miss Jones if she let him alone. Then the 
Daltons said they'd kidnap the teacher if he said the 
word. But Freckles said no, that would cause a lot of 
talk; and, besides, a grown woman eats an awful lot; 
and what would they feed her on? Finally Tom Mul- 
ligan — he was Mutt Mulligan's boy — says: 

"What you got to do, Freckles, is make some kind 
of a noble sacrifice. That's the way they always do 
in these here Lakeside Library books. Something that 
will touch her heart." 



DOGS AND BOYS 147 

And they all agree her heart has got to be touched. 
But how? 

"Maybe," says Squint, "it would touch her heart if 
the Dalton Gang was to march in in a body and offer to 
reform." 

But Tom Mulligan says he wouldn't go that far for 
any one. And after about a week the Dalton Gang lost 
its sympathy and commenced to guy Freckles and poke 
fun at him. And then there were fights — two or three 
every day. But gradually it got so that Freckles didn't 
seem to take any comfort or joy in a fight, and he lost 
spirits more and more. And pretty soon he began to 
get easy to lick. He got so awful easy to lick the 
Daltons got tired of licking him, and quit fighting him 
entirely. And then the worst happened. One day 
they served him notice that until he got his nerve back 
and fell out of love with Miss Jones again, he would not 
be considered a member of the Dalton Gang. But even 
that didn't jar him any — Freckles was plumb ruined. 

One day I heard the humans talking it over that the 
preacher had give in at last. Miss Jones's pa, and her 
uncle too, were both big church members, and he never 
really had a chance from the first. It was in the paper, 
the humans said, that they were engaged, and were to 
be married when school was out. Freckles, he poked 
away from the porch where the family was sitting when 
he heard that, and went to the barn and lay down on a 
pile of hay. I sat outside the barn, and I could hear him 
in there choking back what he was feeling. It made me 
feel right sore, too, and when the moon came up I 



148 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

couldn't keep from howling at it; for here was one of the 
finest kids you ever saw in there bellering like a girl, and 
all because of a no-account woman — a grown-up woman, 
mind you! I went in and lay down on the hay beside 
him, and licked his face, and nuzzled my head up under 
his armpit, to show him I'd stand by him anyhow. 
Pretty soon he went to sleep there, and after a long 
while his father came out and picked him up and carried 
him into the house to bed. He never waked up. 

The next day I happened by the schoolhouse along 
about recess-time. The boys were playing prisoner's 
base, and I'm pretty good at that game myself, so I 
joined in. When the bell rang, I slipped into Freckles's 
room behind the scholars, thinking I'd like a look at 
that Miss Jones myself. Well, she wasn't anything Vd 
go crazy over. When she saw me, there was the deuce 
to pay. 

"Whose dog is that?" she sings out. 

"Please, ma'am," squeals a little girl, "that is Harold 
Watson's dog. Spot." 

"Harold Watson," says she to Freckles, "don't you 
know it's strictly against the rules to bring dogs to 
school?" 

"Yes'm," says Freckles, getting red in the face. 

"Then why did you do it?" 

"I didn't, ma'am," says he. "He's just come visitin' 
like." 

"Harold," says she, "don't be impudent. Step for- 
ward." 

He stepped toward her desk, and she put her hand 



DOGS AND BOYS 149 

on his shoulder. He jerked away from her, and she 
grabbed him by the collar. No dog likes to see a 
grown-up use his boy rough, so I moved a little nearer 
and growled at her. 

''Answer me," she says, "why did you allow this beast 
to come into the schoolroom?'' 

"Spot ain't a beast," says Freckles. "He's my dog." 

She stepped to the stove and picked up a poker, and 
come toward me. I dodged, and ran to the other side 
of her desk, and all the scholars laughed. That made 
her mad, and she made a swipe at me with that poker, 
and she was so sudden that she caught me right in the 
ribs, and I let out a yelp and ran over behind Freckles. 

"You can't hit my dog like that!" yelled Freckles, 
mad as a hornet. "No teacher that ever lived could 
lick my dog!" And he burst out crying, and ran out 
of the room, with me after him. 

"I'm done with you," he sings out from the hall. 
"Marry your old preacher if you want to." 

And then we went out into the middle of the road, 
and he slung stones at the schoolhouse, and yelled 
names, till the principal came out and chased us away. 

But I was glad, because I saw he was cured. A boy 
that is anything will stick up for his dog, and a dog will 
stick up for his boy. We went swimming, and then we 
went back as near the schoolhouse as we dast to. When 
school let out. Freckles licked the whole Dalton Gang, 
one at a time, and made each say, before he let him up: 

"Freckles Watson was never stuck on anybody; and 
if he was, he is cured." 



150 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

They all said it, and then held a meeting; and he was 
elected president. 

And me! — I felt so good I went down-town and 
picked a fuss with a butcher's dog that wore a spiked 
collar. I had always felt a little scared of that dog 
before, but that night I just naturally chewed him to 
a frazzle. 



THE KIDNAPPING OF 
BILL PATTERSON 

'This town/' says Squint, quiet, but determined, 
"has got to be made an example of. It has got to 
learn that it can't laugh at the Dalton Gang and go 
unscathed. Freckled Watson of Dead Man's Gulch," 
says he to me, "speak up ! What form shall the punish- 
ment take?" 

"Blood," says I. 

"Two-Gun Tom of Texas," says he to Tom Mulligan, 
"speak!" 

"Death!" says Tom. 

"Arizona Pete, speak!" 

"Blood and Death," says Pete Wilson, making his 
voice deep. 

"Broncho Bob?" 

"Blood, death, and fire!" says Bob Jones. 

There was a solemn pause for a minute, and then I 
says, according to rule and regulation : 
' "And what says Dead-Shot Squint, the Terror of the 
Plains?" 

He was very serious while one might have counted 
ten breaths, and then he pulled his jack-knife from his 
pocket and whet it on the palm of his hand, and tried 
its point on his thumb, and replied: 

151 



152 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

"He says death, and seals it with a vow!*' 
That vow was a mighty solemn thing, and we always 
felt it so. It wasn't the kind of a thing you would ever 
let small kids or girls know about. First you all sat 
down in a circle, with your feet together, and rolled 
up the sleeve of your left arm. Then the knife was 
passed around, and each drew blood out of his left arm. 
Then each one got as much blood out of the next fellow's 
arm as he could, in his mouth, and all swallowed simul- 
taneous, to show you were going into the thing to the 
death and no turning back. Next we signed our names 
in a ring, using blood mixed with gunpowder. But not 
on paper, mind you. We signed 'em on parchment. 
First and last, that parchment was a good deal of trou- 
/ ble. If you think skinning a squirrel or a rat to get his 
hide for parchment is an easy trick, just try it. Let alone 
catching them being no snap. But Squint, he was Cap- 
tain, and he was stern on parchment, for it makes an 
oath more legal, and all the old-time outlaws wouldn't 
look at anything else. But we got a pretty good supply 
/ ahead by saving all the dead cats and things like that 
^ we could find, and unless you know likely places to look 
it would surprise you how many dead cats there are in 
the world. 

We were in the Horse Thieves' Cave, about a mile 
from town. It had really been used for that, way back 
before the war. There was a gang pretended to be 
honest settlers like everybody else. But they used to 
steal horses and hide them out in there. When they had 
a dozen or so of them they'd take 'em over to the Mis- 



KIDNAPPING OF BILL PATTERSON 153 

sissippi River, which was about thirty miles west, some 
night, and raft 'em down stream and sell 'em at Cairo 
or St. Louis. That went on for years, but along in 
the fifties, my grandfather said, when he was a kid, a 
couple was hung, and the remainder got across the 
river and went west. The cave was up on the side of 
a hill in the woods, and forgotten about except by a 
few old-timers. The door-beams had rotted and fallen 
down, and the sand and dirt had slid down over the 
mouth of it, and vines and bushes grown up. No one 
would have guessed there was any cave there at all. 
But the dogs got to digging around there one afternoon 
when the Dalton Gang was meeting in the woods, and 
uncovered part of those door beams. We dug some 
more and opened her up. It took a lot of work to 
clean her out, but she was as good as new when we 
got done with her. We never told any one, and the 
vines and bushes were so thick you could hunt a year 
and never find the opening. It isn't every bunch of 
kids get a real Horse Thieves' Cave ready-made like 
that, right from the hands of Providence, as you might 
say. Pete Wilson used to brag and say his grand-dad 
was one of those horse-thieves. It made the rest of us 
feel kind of meek for a time, because none of us could 
claim any honour or grandeur like that in our families. 
But my grand-dad, who has a terrible long memory 
about the early days, said it wasn't so; so far as he could 
recollect Pete's grand-dad never had any ambition 
above shoats and chickens. 
Well, I was telling you about that oath. We were 



134 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

taking it because Squint's father, who was mayor, had 
run on to one of those parchments (which Squint ought 
never to have taken away from the cave), and had 
asked a lot of fool questions about it. Then he threw 
back his head and laughed at the Dalton Gang. It 
made our blood boil. Hence, our plans for revenge. 

'The time has come," said Squint, "for a bold stroke. 
Yonder proud city laughs. But he laughs best who 
laughs last. And ere another sun has set " 

"The last time we took the blood oath," interrupts 
Bob Jones, "we didn't do anything more important 
than steal the ice cream from the Methodist lawn 
sociable." 

"There must be no failure," says Squint, not heeding 
him, and he jabbed the knife into the ground and 
gritted his teeth. You could see how the memory of 
being laughed at was rankling through his veins. 

"But, Squint," says Tom Mulligan, looking quite a 
bit worried, "you don't really mean to kill any one, do 
you?" 

Squint only says, very haughty: "The blood oath has 
been sworn. Is there a traitor here?" He was al- 
ways a great one for holding us to it. Squint was, unless 
what he called an Honourable Compromise came into 
sight. And we all got mighty uncomfortable and 
gloomy trying to think of some Honourable Compro- 
mise. It was to me that the great idea came, all of a 
sudden. 

"Squint," I says, "the thing to do is to kidnap some 
prominent citizen and hold him for ransom." 



KIDNAPPING OF BILL PATTERSON 155 

Squint brightened up and said to wring gold from the 
coffers of yonder proud city would be even more satis- 
faction than blood. The next question was: Who will 
we kidnap? 

"I suggest the mayor of yonder town!" says Squint. 

"Gee — your dad, Squint?" says Tom Mulligan. 

"I offer him as a sacrifice," says Squint, very majesti- 
cally. No one could do any more, and we all felt 
Squint's dad had deserved it. But the idea was so big 
it kind of scared us, too. But while the rest of us were 
admiring Squint, Bob Jones got jealous and offered his 
father. Then we all offered our fathers, except Tom 
Mulligan, who didn't have anything better to offer than 
a pair of spinster aunts. There was a general row over 
whose father was the most prominent citizen. But 
finally we decided to bar all relatives and kinsfolk, in 
order to prevent jealousy, even to the distant cousins. 
But it isn't a very big town, and it would surprise you 
how many people are related to each other there. 
Finally Bill Patterson was voted to be the Honourable 
Compromise, being known as the town drunkard, and 
not related to anybody who would own up to it. 

It figured out easy enough. All we had to do was to 
wait until Sunday night, and take Bill out of the lock- 
up. Every Saturday afternoon regular Si Emery, who 
was the city marshal, arrested Bill for being drunk on 
Main Street, and Bill was kept in jail until Monday 
morning. Si was getting pretty old and feeble and 
shaky, and of late years the town council never let him 
have the lock-up key until just an hour or so before it 



156 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

was time to arrest Bill on Saturdays. Because one time 
Si had forgot to feed and water a tramp in there for 
about a week, and the tramp took sick after a while, and 
he was dead when Si remembered about him, and had 
to be buried at the town's expense. And several times 
some tough customers had taken the keys away from Si 
and broken into the place and played cards and cut 
up in there scandalous for half the night. So it was 
thought best Si shouldn't carry the keys, nor the hand- 
cuffs which belonged to the town. After he had 
locked Bill up on Saturday evenings Si would take the 
keys to the mayor's house, and get them again on Mon- 
day morning to let Bill out. 

So the next Sunday night when the hired girl wasn't 
looking. Squint sneaked the keys and the town hand- 
cuffs out of the drawer in the kitchen table where the 
knives and forks were kept. He slipped upstairs to 
bed, and no one noticed. About ten o'clock he dressed 
again, and got out the back window, and down the light- 
ning rod; and at the same hour us other Daltons were 
doing much the same. 

We met behind the lockup, and put on the masks 
we had made. They had hair on the bottoms of them 
to look like beards sticking out. 

"Who's got the dark-lantern?" Squint asks, in a 
whisper. 

"M-m-me," answered Pete Wilson, stuttering. I was 
so excited myself I was biting my coat-sleeve so my 
teeth wouldn't chatter. And Bob Jones was clicking 
the trigger of the cavalry pistol his uncle carried in the 



KIDNAPPING OF BILL PATTERSON 157 

war, and couldn't stop, like a girl can't stop laughing 
when she gets hysterics. The cylinder was gone and it 
couldn't be loaded or he would have killed himself, for 
he turned it up and looked right into the muzzle and 
kept clicking when Squint asked him what the matter 
was. Pete shook so he couldn't light the lantern; but 
Squint, he was that calm and cool he lit her with the 
third match. He unlocked the door and in we went. 

Bill was snoring like all get out, and talking in his 
sleep. That made us feel braver again. Squint says 
to handcuff him easy and gentle before he wakes. Well, 
there wasn't any trouble in that; the trouble was to 
wake him up afterward. He was so interested in what- 
ever he was dreaming about that the only way we 
could do it was to tickle his nose with a straw and wait 
until he sneezed himself awake. Squint clapped the 
muzzle of the pistol to his forehead, while I flashed the 
lantern in his eyes and the other three sat on his stom- 
ach and grabbed his legs. Squint says: 

"William Patterson, one move and you are a dead 
man!" 

But Bill didn't try to move any; he only said: 

"Can't an honest working-man take a little nap? 
You go 'way and leave me be!" 

"William Patterson," says Squint, "you are kid- 
napped!" 

"Yer a liar," says Bill. "I ain't. Ye can't prove 
it on to me. I'm just takin' a little nap." 

Then he rouses up a little more and looks at us 
puzzled, and begins to mumble and talk to himself: 



158 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

"Here I be," he says, "and here they be! I can see 
'em, all right; but they can't fool me! They ain't 
really nothing here. 1 seen too many of them trem- 
enses come and go to be fooled that easy." 

"Arise, William Patterson, and come with us," says 
Squint. 

"Now, you don't want to get too sassy," says Bill, "or 
you'll turn into something else the first thing you know. 
You tremenses always does turn into something else." 

We had to kick him on the shins to make him get up. 
When we did that he says to himself; "Shucks, now! 
A body'd think he was bein' kicked if he didn't know 
different, wouldn't he?" 

He came along peaceable enough, but muttering to 
himself all the way: "Monkeys and crocodiles and these 
here striped jackasses with wings on to 'em I've saw 
many a time, and argified with 'em, too; and talked 
with elephants no bigger'n a man's fist; and oncet I 
chased a freight train round and round that calaboose 
and had it give me sass; but this is the first time a 
passel o' little old men ever come and trotted me down 
the pike." 

And he kept talking like that all the way to the cave. 
It was midnight before we took off his handcuffs and 
shoved him in. When we gave him that shove, he 
did get sort of spiteful and he says : 

"You tremenses think you're mighty smart, but if I 
was to come out of this sudden, where would you be? 
Blowed up, that's where — like bubbles!" 

We padlocked the door we had rigged up over the 



KIDNAPPING OF BILL PATTERSON 159 

mouth of the cave, and by the time it was locked he was 
asleep; we could hear him snoring when we lit out for 
town again. 

On the calaboose door, and in front of the post-office, 
and on the bank, we tacked big notices. They were 
printed rough on wrapping paper and spelled wrong so 
it would look like some tough customers had done it. 
They read as follows : 

Bill Patterson has Bin stole 5 hundred |$ ransum must 
be left on baptis Cherch steps by Monday mid-night or his 
life pays us forfut like a Theef in the nite he was took from 
jale who Will Be next! 

— the kidNappers. 

Next morning we were all up at the cave as early as 
we could make it. I had a loaf of bread and a pie and 
part of a boiled ham, and Pete had some canned sar- 
dines and bacon he got out of his dad's store, and the 
others were loaded up with eggs and canned fruit and 
what they could get hold of easy. You may believe it 
or not, but when we opened that cave door Bill was still 
asleep. Squint woke him up and told him: 

"Prisoner, it is the intention of the Dalton Gang to 
treat you with all the honours of war until such time as 
you are ransomed, or, if not ransomed, executed. So 
long as you make no effort to escape you need have no 
fear.'' 

''I ain't afeared," says Bill, looking at that grub like 
he could hardly believe his eyes. We built a fire and 
cooked breakfast. There was a hollow stump on the 



160 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

side of the hill, and we had dug into the bottom of it 
through the top of the cave. It made a regular chim- 
ney for our fireplace. If any one saw the stump smok- 
ing outside they would only think some farmer was 
burning out stumps. 

Bill always wore a piece of rope around his waist in 
place of a belt or suspenders. When he had eaten so 
much he had to untie the rope he sat back and lighted 
his pipe, and said to me, right cunning: 

"Til bet you ain't got any idea what state this here 
is." 

"It's Illinois," says I. He looked like he was pleased 
to hear it. 

"So it is," says he. "So it is!" After he had smoked 
awhile longer he said: "What county in Illinois would 
you say it was, for choice?" 

"Bureau county," I told him. I saw then he hadn't 
known where he was. 

"It ain't possible, is it," he says, "that I ever seen any 
of you boys on the streets of a little city by the name 
of Hazelton?" 

I told him yes. 

"I s'pose they got the same old city marshal there?" 
says he. I guess he thought maybe he'd been gone 
for years and years, like Rip Van Winkle. He was 
having a hard time to get things straightened out in 
his mind. He stared and stared into the bowl of his 
pipe, looking at me now and then out of the corners of 
his eyes as if he wondered whether he could trust me or 
not; finally he leaned over toward me and whispered in- 



KIDNAPPING OF BILL PATTERSON 161 

to my ear, awfully anxious: ''Who would you say I 
I was, for choice, now?" 

i| ''Bill Patterson," I told him, and he brightened up 
I considerable and chuckled to himself; and then he said, 
I feeling of himself all over and tying on his rope again : 
I "Bill Patterson is correct! Been wanderin' around 

through these here woods for weeks an' weeks, livin' on 
! roots an' yarbs like a wild man of Borneo." Then he 
j asks me very confidential : "How long now, if you was to 

make a guess, would you judge Bill had been livin' in 
'this here cave?" 
I But Squint cut in and told him point blank he was 

kidnapped. It took a long time to get that into Bill's 

head, but finally he asked: "What for?" 
"For ransom," says I. 
"And revenge," says Squint. 
Bill looked dazed for a minute, and then said if it 

was all the same to us he'd like to have a talk with a 
I lawyer. But Bob Jones broke in and told him "Unless 
' five hundred dollars is paid over to the gang, you will 

never see Hazelton again." He looked frightened at 

that and began to pick at his coat-sleeves, and said he 
I guessed if we didn't mind he'd go and take a little 
!nap now. You never saw such a captive for sleeping 
' up his spare time; he was just naturally cut out to be a 

prisoner. But we felt kind of sorry and ashamed we 

had scared him; it was so easy to scare him, and we 
' agreed we'd speak gentle and easy to him after that. 
I At dinner time we waked Bill up and gave him an- 
F other meal. And he was ready for it; the sight of 



162 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

victuals seemed to take any fright he might have had 
out of his mind. You never saw such an appetite in 
all your born days; he ate like he had years of lost 
time to make up for; and maybe he had. He was 
having such a good time be began to have his doubts 
whether it would last, for he said, in a worried kind of 
way, after dinner: 'This here thing of being kidnapped, 
now, ain't a thing you boys is going to try and charge 
for, is it? 'Cause if it is them there sharp tricks can't 
be worked on to me; and if you was to sue me for it 
you sue a pauper." 

After dinner Squint and I went to town on a scout- 
ing party. We hung around the streets and listened 
to the talk that was going on just like a couple of spies 
would that had entered the enemy's camp in war time. 
Everybody was wondering what had become of Bill, 
and gassing about the notices; and it made us feel 
mighty proud to think that fame had come to ones so 
young as us, even although it came in disguise so that 
no one but us knew it. But in the midst of that feeling 
we heard Hy Williams, the city drayman, saying to a 
crowd of fellows who were in front of the post office 
waiting for the mail to be distributed: 

'The beatingest part of the whole thing is that any 
one would be fools enough to think that this town or 
any other town would pay ransom to get back a worth- 
less cuss like Bill Patterson!" 

It had never struck us like that before. Instead of 
being famous like we had thought, here we were actually 
being laughed at again! Squint, he gritted his teeth, 



KIDNAPPING OF BILL PATTERSON 163 

and I knew all the rankling that he had done inside of 
him was as nothing to the rankling that he was doing 
now. So that night we put up some more notices 
around town, which read as follows: 

n. B. — take notus! we didunt reely Expect money for 
Old Bill Patterson, we onely done that to show this town 
Is in Our Power. Take warning and pay Up the next will 
be a rich one or his child. 

— kidnappers. 

That really made folks pretty serious, that notice. 
There was a piece in a Chicago paper about the things 
that had happened in our town. The piece told a lot 
of things that never had happened, but when the papers 
came down from Chicago and they all read it the whole 
town began to get worse and worse excited. And about 
that time we began to get scared ourselves. For there 
was talk of sending off to Chicago and getting a detec- 
tive. People were frightened about their kids, too. It 
kept getting harder and harder for us to get out to the 
cave to guard Bill. Not that he needed much guarding, 
either; for he was having the time of his life out there, 
eating and sleeping and not working at anything else. 
It had been years since he had struck any kind of work 
that suited him as well as being kidnapped did; if we 
hadn't been so worried it would have been a pleasure to 
us to see how happy and contented we were making him; 
he acted like he had found the real job in life that he 
had always been looking for, and the only thing that 
bothered him at all was when he recollected about that 
ransom and got afraid the town would pay it and end 



164 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

his snap. But mostly he didn't bother about anything; 
for his recollection was only by fits and starts; yester- 
day was just as far off to him as a year ago. The second 
day he was there he did get a little grouchy because 
he had been without anything to drink for so long. 
But that night someone broke into the saloon and stole 
a lot of quart bottles of whiskey; about a bushel of 
them, it was said. We didn't suspect it was Bill, right 
at first, for he was foxy enough to keep it hid from us; 
and when we did know we didn't dare say anything! 
That whiskey was the one thing Bill had lacked to 
make him completely happy. But the theft worked in 
a way that increased our troubles. For it showed peo- 
ple that the mysterious gang was still hanging around 
waiting to strike a desperate stroke. And the very next 
night a store was broken into and some stuff stolen. 
It wasn't Bill, but I suppose some tramp that was hang- 
ing around; but it helped to stir things up worse and 
worse. So we decided that we had better turn Bill 
loose. We held a meeting out by the cave, and then 
Squint told him: 

''Prisoner, you are at liberty!" 

''What d'ye mean by that?" says Bill. "You ain't 
goin' back on me, are ye?" 

"Yonder town has been punished enough," says 
Squint. "Go free — we strike your shackles off!" 

"But see here," says Bill, "wasn't I kidnapped reg'lar? 
Ain't I been a model prisoner?" 

"But we're through with you. Bill," we told him. 
"Don't you understand?" 



KIDNAPPING OF BILL PATTERSON 165 

Bill allowed it was a mean trick we were playing on 
him; he said he had thought we were his friends, and 
that he'd done his best to give satisfaction in the place, 
and here we were, firing him, as you might say, without 
any warning, or giving him any chance to get another 
job like it, or even telling him where he had failed to 
make good, and then he snuffled like he was going to 
cry, and said: 'That's a great way to treat an honest 
workin'-man, that is! An' they call this a free country, 
too!" 

But Squint, while expressing sorrow that we should 
have raised any false hopes, was firm with him, too. 
"You take the rest of that whiskey and chase along, 
now. Bill," he said, 'you aren't kidnapped any more." 

But Bill flared up at that. "I ain't, ain't I?" he said. 
'Ter a liar! I was kidnapped fair and square; kid- 
napped I be, and kidnapped I stay! I'll show you 
blamed little cheats whether I'm kidnapped or not, I 
will!" 

He took a chew of tobacco and sat down on a log, 
and studied us, looking us over real sullen and spiteful. 
"Now, then," he says, finally, "if you young smart alecs 
think you can treat a free man that-a-way yer dern 
fools. I got the law on to my side, I have. Do you 
think I don't know that? Mebby you boys don't 
know ye could go to jail for kidnappin' an honest work- 
in'-man? Well, ye could, if it was found out on ye. 
It's a crime, that's what it is, and ye could go to jail for 
it. You treat Old Bill fair and square and keep friends 
with him, and he won't tell on you; but the minute I 



166 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

hear any more talk about bein' set at liberty I'll tell on 
ye, and to jail you goes. I'm mighty comfortable where 
I be, and I ain't goin' to be turned out." 

We all looked at each other, and then we looked away 
again, and our hearts sank. For each one read in his ^ 
neighbour's eyes (as Squint said later) what his doom \ 
might well be. 

"Kidnapped I be," says Bill again, very rough and de- | 
cided, "and kidnapped I stay. And what's more, I want 
chicken for supper to-night. I ain't had no chicken for \ 
quite a spell. You can wake me up when supper's ready." 
And he went into the cave and lay down for a nap. 

We were in his power, and he knew it ! 

We had to steal that chicken, and it went against the 
grain to do it. It was the first time in its career of 
crime the Dalton Gang had ever actually stolen any- 
thing. Except, of course, watermelons and such truck, 
which isn't really stealing. And except the ice cream 
from the Methodist lawn sociable, which was for re- 
venge and as a punishment on the Sunday School, and 
so not really stealing, either. 

Things got worse and worse. For Bill, he kept us . 
on the jump. He got to wanting more and more dif- ' 
ferent things to eat, and was more and more particular _ 
about the cooking. He wouldn't lift a hand for him- 
self, not even to fill and light his own pipe. We waited 
on him hand and foot, all day long. And first he would 
take a fancy for a mess of squirrels, and then he would 
want pigeons; and we had to take turns fanning the 
flies off of him when he wanted to take a nap. Once 



KIDNAPPING OF BILL PATTERSON 167 

he told a story, and we all laughed at it; and that gave 
him the idea he was a great story teller; and he would 
tell foolish yarns by the hour and get sulky if we didn't 
laugh. We got so we would do anything to keep him 
in a good humour. We had a lot of Indian stories and 
Old Sleuths out to the cave, and he made us take turns 
reading to him. That good-for-nothing loafer turned 
into a regular king, and we were his slaves. 

Between sneaking out there to keep him happy and 
contented and rustling up grub for him, and thinking 
all the time we would be arrested the next minute, and 
wanting to confess and not daring to, we all got right 
nervous. Then there was a man came to town who 
didn't tell what his business was the first day he was 
there, and we were right sure he was a detective. He 
passed right by the cave one day, and we hugged the 
ground behind the bushes and didn't dare breathe. It 
turned out afterward he was only looking at some land 
he was figuring on buying. But that night I dreamed 
that that man arrested me; and I was being sent to 
jail when I waked up screaming out something about 
kidnapping. I heard my Pa say to my Ma, after they 
had got me quieted down : 

j "Poor little fellow! He thought he was kidnapped! 

! No wonder he is afraid, the state this whole town is in. 

I If those desperadoes are caught, they'll go to the pen for 

j a good long term : nothing on earth can save 'em from 

' a Bureau county jury." 

Then he went back into his room and went to sleep; 
but I didn't go to sleep. What he had said didn't make 



168 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

me feel sleepy. I slipped out of bed and prayed enough 
that night to make up for the times I had forgot it 
lately; and the next day the rest of the Dalton Gang 
admitted they had prayed some, too. 

But the worst of all was when Bill made friends with 
the tramp. Squint and I went out to the cave one 
morning to get Bill's breakfast for him, and as we got 
near we heard tzvo sets of snores. Bill's snore you could 
tell a long way off, he sort of gargled his snores and they 
ended up with kind of a choke and an explosion. But 
the other snore was more of a steady whistling sound. 
We ran across the fellow sudden, and it like to have 
frightened us out of a year's growth. He was lying 
just inside the cave with his hat pulled over his face, 
but he was snoring with one eye open. It peered out 
from under the brim of his hat; it was half-hidden, but 
it was open all right, and it was staring straight at us. 
It wasn't human; no one with good intentions would lie 
there like that and snore like he was asleep and watch 
folks at the same time on the sly. We couldn't even 
run; we stood there with that regular see-saw snore 
coming and going, and that awful eye burning into the 
centres of our souls, as Squint says later, and thought 
our end had come. But he waked up and opened the 
other eye, and then we saw the first one was glass and 
he hadn't meant any harm by it. He was right sorry 
he'd scared us, he said; but we'd have to get used to 
that eye, for he allowed he was kidnapped, too. It was 
two days before he quit being our captive and left, and 
they are among the saddest days I ever spent. 



KIDNAPPING OF BILL PATTERSON 169 

He left because Bill's whiskey was gone; and the 
afternoon he left, Bill was helpless. When we saw Bill 
in that fix it gave us an idea how to get rid of him. 
That night he was still weak and easy to handle. So 
we slipped the handcuffs on him and took him back 
and locked him into the calaboose again. Then we put 
signs and notices around town that read this way: 



Ha Ha Ha 

Did you ever get left ! this town joshed me for years but 
I have got even — the joke is on to you — I wasn't kidnapped 
a tall — who is the suckers now? 

Bill Patterson. 



And that town was so mad that when they found Bill 
in the jail again there was talk of handling him pretty 
rough. But it all turned into josh. Bill, when he woke 
up in the calaboose, thought he had just had a dream 
at first, and denied he had ever been absent. Then 
when he saw they all took him for a deep joker he be- 
gan to act like he was a joker. And before long he got 
to thinking he really had played that trick on the town. 
When they used to ask him how on earth he got into and 
out of the calaboose without the keys, he would wink 
very mysterious, and look important, and nod and 
chuckle to himself and say that was the best part of the 
joke and he intended to keep it to himself. 

But one day when he was almost sober he saw Squint 
and me on the street and stared at us long and hard like 
he was trying to recollect something, and scratched his 



170 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

head and said: "You boys didn't always used to live in 
this town, did you?" 

"Uh-huh," says I. 

"That's funny," says Bill, "I could have swore you 
was boys I once knowed a long ways off from here that 
time I was on my travels." 



BLOOD WILL TELL 
(As told by the dog) 

I AM a middle-sized dog, with spots on me here and 
there, and several different colours of hair mixed in even 
where there aren't any spots, and my ears are frazzled 
a little on the ends where they have been chewed in 
fights. 

At first glance you might not pick me for an aristo- 
crat. But I am one. I was considerably surprised 
when I discovered it, as nothing in my inmost feelings 
up to that time, nor in the treatment which I had re- 
ceived from dogs, humans or boys, had led me to sus- 
pect it. 

I can well remember the afternoon on which the dis- 
covery was made. A lot of us dogs were lying in the 
grass, up by the swimming hole, just lazying around, 
and the boys were doing the same. All the boys were 
naked and comfortable, and no humans were about, the 
only thing near being a cow or two and some horses, 
and although large they are scarcely more human than 
boys. Everybody had got tired of swimming, and it 
was too hot to drown out gophers or fight bumblebees, 
and the boys were smoking grapevine cigarettes and 
talking. 

171 



172 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

Us dogs was listening to the boys talk. A Stray 
Boy, which I mean one not claimed or looked out for 
or owned by any dog, says to Freckles Watson, who is 
my boy : 

"What breed would you call that dog of yours, 
Freck?" 

I pricked up my ears at that. I cannot say that I 
had ever set great store by breeds up to the time that I 
found out I was an aristocrat myself, believing, as Bill 
Patterson, a human and the town drunkard, used to say 
when intoxicated, that often an honest heart beats be- 
neath the outcast's ragged coat. 

"Spot ain't any one particular breed," says Freckles. 
"He's considerably mixed." 

"He's a mongrel," says Squint Thompson, who is 
Jack Thompson's boy. 

"He ain't," says Freckles, so huffy that I saw a mon- 
grel must be some sort of a disgrace. "You're a link, 
link liar, and so's your Aunt Mariar," says Freckles. 

I thought there might be a fight then, but it was too 
hot for any enjoyment in a fight, I guess, for Squint let 
it pass, only saying, "I ain't got any Aunt Mariar, and 
you're another." 

"A dog," chips in the Stray Boy, "has either got to 
be a thoroughbred or a mongrel. He's either an aristo- 
crat or else he's a common dog." 

"Spot ain't any common dog," says Freckles, sticking 
up for me. "He can lick any dog in town within five 
pounds of his weight." 

"He's got some spaniel in him," says the Stray Boy. 



BLOOD WILL TELL 173 

"His nose is pointed like a hound's nose," says Squint 
Thompson. 

''Well/' says Freckles, "neither one of them kind of 
dogs is a common dog." 

"Spot has got some bulldog blood in him, too," says 
Tom Mulligan, an Irish boy owned by a dog by the 
name of Mutt Mulligan. "Did you ever notice how 
Spot will hang on so you can't pry him loose, when he 
gets into a fight?" 

"That proves he is an aristocratic kind of dog," says 
Freckles. 

"There's some bird dog blood in Spot," says the Stray 
Boy, sizing me up careful. 

"He's got some collie in him, too," says Squint 
Thompson. "His voice sounds just like a collie's when 
he barks." 

"But his tail is more like a coach dog's tail," says 
Tom Mulligan. 

"His hair ain't, though," says the Stray Boy. "Some 
of his hair is like a setter's." 

"His teeth are like a mastiff's," says Mutt Mulligan's 
boy Tom. And they went on like that; I never knew 
before there were so many different kinds of thorough- 
bred dog. Finally Freckles says: 

"Yes, he's got all them different kinds of thorough- 
bred blood in him, and he's got other kinds you ain't 
mentioned and that you ain't slick enough to see. You 
may think you're running him down, but what you say 
just proves he ain't a common dog." 

I was glad to hear that. It was beginning to look to 



174 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

me that they had a pretty good case for me being a 
mongrel. 

"How does it prove it?" asked the Stray Boy. 

"Well/' says Freckles, "you know who the King of 
Spain is, don't you?" 

They said they'd heard of him from time to time. 

"Well," says Freckles, "if you were a relation of the 
King of Spain you'd be a member of the Spanish royal 
family. You fellows may not know that, but you 
would. You'd be a swell, a regular high-mucky-muck." 

They said they guessed they would. 

"Now, then," says Freckles, "if you were a relation 
to the King of Switzerland, too, you'd be just twice as 
swell, wouldn't you, as if you were only related to one 
royal family? Plenty of people are related to just one 
royal family." 

Tom Mulligan butts in and says that way back, in 
the early days, his folks was the Kings of Ireland; but 
no one pays any attention. 

"Suppose, then, you're a cousin of the Queen of 
England into the bargain and your grand-dad was King 
of Scotland, and the Prince of Wales and the Emperor 
of France and the Sultan of Russia and the rest of those 
royalties were relations of yours, wouldn't all that royal 
blood make you twenty times as much of a high-mucky- 
muck as if you had just one measly little old king for a 
relation?" 

The boys had to admit that it would. 

"You wouldn't call a fellow with all that royal blood 
in him a mongrel, would you?" says Freckles. "You 



BLOOD WILL TELL 175 

bet your sweet life you wouldn't! A fellow like that 
is darned near on the level with a congressman or a vice- 
president. Whenever he travels around in the old 
country they turn out the brass band; and the firemen 
and the Knights of Pythias and the Modern Woodmen 
parade, and the mayor makes a speech, and there's a 
picnic and firecrackers, and he gets blamed near any- 
thing he wants. People kow-tow to him, just like they 
do to a swell left-handed pitcher or a champion prize- 
fighter. If you went over to the old country and called 
a fellow like that a mongrel, and it got out on you, you 
would be sent to jail for it." 

Tom Mulligan says yes, that is so; his grand-dad 
came to this country through getting into some kind of 
trouble about the King of England, and the King of 
England ain't anywhere near as swell as the fellow 
Freckles described, nor near so royal, neither. 

"Well, then," says Freckles, "it's the same way with 
my dog. Spot, here. Any dog can be full of just one 
kind of thoroughbred blood. That's nothing! But 
Spot here has got more different kinds of thoroughbred 
blood in him than any dog you ever saw. By your own 
say-so he has. He's got all kinds of thoroughbred 
blood in him. If there's any kind he ain't got, you just 
name it, will you?" 

"He ain't got any Great Dane in him," yells the Stray 
Boy, hating to knuckle under. 

"You're a liar, he has, too," says Freckles. 

The Stray Boy backed it, and there was a fight. All 
us dogs and boys gathered around in a ring to watch 



176 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

it, and I was more anxious than anybody else. For the 
way that fight went, it was easy to see, would decide 
what I was. 

Well, Freckles licked that Stray Boy, and rubbed his 
nose in the mud, and that's how I come to be an aristo- 
crat. 

Being an aristocrat may sound easy. And it may 
look easy to outsiders. And it may really be easy for 
them that are used to it. But it wasn't easy for me. 
It came on me suddenly, the knowledge that I was one, 
and without warning. I didn't have any time to prac- 
tise up being one. One minute I wasn't one, and the 
next minute I was; and while, of course, I felt impor- 
tant over it, there were spells when I would get kind of 
discouraged, too, and wish I could go back to being a 
common dog again. I kept expecting my tastes and 
habits to change. I watched and waited for them to. 
But they didn't. No change at all set in on me. But 
I had to pretend I was changed. Then I would get 
tired of pretending, and be down-hearted about the 
whole thing, and say to myself: 'There has been a mis- 
take. I am not an aristocrat after all." 

I might have gone along like that for a long time, 
partly in joy over my noble birth, and partly in doubt, 
without ever being certain, if it had not been for a hap- 
pening which showed, as Freckles said, that blood will 
tell. 

It happened the day Wilson's World's Greatest One 
Ring Circus and Menagerie came to our town. Freck- 
les and me, and all the other dogs and boys, and a good 



BLOOD WILL TELL 111 

many humans, too, followed the street parade around 
through town and back to the circus lot. Many went 
in, and the ones that didn't have any money hung 
around outside a while and explained to each other 
they were going at night, because a circus is more fun 
at night anyhow. Freckles didn't have any money, but 
his dad was going to take him that night, so when the 
parade was over, him and me went back to his dad's 
drug store on Main Street, and I crawled under the soda- 
water counter to take a nap. 

Freckles's dad, that everyone calls Doc Watson, is a 
pretty good fellow for a human, and he doesn't mind 
you hanging around the store if you don't drag bones 
in or scratch too many fleas off. So I'm there consider- 
able in right hot weather. Under the soda water coun- 
ter is the coolest place for a dog in the whole town. 
There's a zinc tub under there always full of water, 
where Doc washes the soda-water glasses, and there's 
always considerable water slopped on to the floor. It's 
damp and dark there always. Outdoors it may be so 
hot in the sun that your tongue hangs out of you so far 
you tangle your feet in it, but in under there you can 
lie comfortable and snooze, and when you wake up and 
want a drink there's the tub with the glasses in it. And 
flies don't bother you because they stay on top of the 
counter where soda water has been spilled. 

Circus day was a hot one, and I must have drowsed 
ofi" pretty quick after lying down. I don't know how 
long I slept, but when I waked up it was with a start, 
for something important was going on outside in Main 



178 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

Street. I could hear people screaming and swearing 
and running along the wooden sidewalk, and horses 
whinnying, and dogs barking, and old Si Emery, 
the city marshal, was yelling out that he was an 
officer of the law, and the steam whistle on the flour mill 
was blowing. And it all seemed to be right in front of 
our store. I was thinking I'd better go out and see 
about it, when the screen doors crashed like a runaway 
horse had come through them, and the next minute a 
big yellow dog was back of the counter, trying to 
scrouch down and scrooge under it like he was scared 
and was hiding. He backed me into the corner without 
seeing me or knowing I was there, and like to have 
squashed me. 

No dog — and it never struck me that maybe this 
wasn't a dog — no dog can just calmly sit down on me 
like that when I'm waking up from a nap, and get away 
with it, no matter how big he is, and in spite of the 
darkness under there I could see and feel that this was 
the biggest dog in the world. I had been dreaming I 
was in a fight, anyhow, when he crowded in there with 
his hindquarters on top of me, and I bit him on the 
hind leg. 

When I bit him he let out a noise like a thrashing 
machine starting up. It wasn't a bark. Nothing but 
the end of the world coming could bark like that. It 
was a noise more like I heard one time when the boys 
dared Freckles to lie down between the cattle guards 
on the railroad track and let a train run over him about 
a foot above his head, and I laid down there with him 



BLOOD WILL TELL 179 

and it nearly deefened both of us. When he let out 
that noise I says to myself, "Great guns! What kind 
of a dog have I bit?" 

And as he made that noise he jumped, and over went 
the counter, marble top and all, with a smash, and jam 
into the show window he went, with his tail swinging, 
and me right after him, practically on top of him. It 
wasn't that I exactly intended to chase him, you under- 
stand, but I was rattled on account of that awful noise 
he had let out, and I wanted to get away from there, 
and I went the same way he did. So when he bulged 
through the window glass on to the street I bulged right 
after him, and as he hit the sidewalk I bit him again. 
The first time I bit him because I was sore, but the 
second time I bit him because I was so nervous I didn't 
know what I was doing, hardly. And at the second 
bite, without even looking behind him, he jumped clean 
over the hitch rack and a team of horses in front of the 
store and landed right in the middle of the road with 
his tail between his legs. 

And then I realized for the first time he wasn't a dog 
at all. He was the circus lion. 

Mind you, I'm not saying that I would have bit him 
at all if I'd a-known at the start he was a lion. 

And I ain't saying I wouldn't 'a' bit him, either. 

But actions speak louder than words, and records are 
records, and you can't go back on them, and the fact is 
I did bite him. I bit him twice. 

And that second bite, when we came bulging through 
the window together, the whole town saw. It was get- 



180 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

ting up telephone poles, and looking out of second-story 
windows, and crawling under sidewalks and into cellars, 
and trying to hide behind the town pump; but no mat- 
ter where it was trying to get to, it had one eye on that 
lion, and it saw me chasing him out of that store. I 
don't say I would have chased him if he hadn't been 
just ahead of me, anyhow, and I don't say I wouldn't 
have chased him, but the facts are I did chase him. 

The lion was just as scared as the town — and the 
town was so scared it didn't know the lion was scared 
at all — and when his trainer got hold of him in the road 
he was tickled to death to be led back to his cage, and he 
lay down in the far corner of it, away from the people, 
and trembled till he shook the wagon it was on. 

But if there was any further doubts in any quarter 
about me being an aristocrat, the way I bit and chased 
that lion settled 'em forever. That night Freckles and 
Doc went to the circus, and I marched in along with 
them. And every kid in town, as they saw Freckles and 
me marching in, says: 

'There goes the dog that licked the lion!" 
And Freckles, every time any one congratulated him 
on being the boy that belonged to that kind of a dog, 
would say: 

"Blood will tell! Spot's an aristocrat, he is." 
And him and me and Doc Watson, his dad, stopped 
in front of the lion's cage that night and took a good 
long look at him. He was a kind of an old moth-eaten 
lion, but he was a lion all right, and he looked mighty 
big in there. He looked so big that all my doubts come 



BLOOD WILL TELL 181 

back on me, and I says to myself: "Honest, now, if Fd 
a-known he was a lion, and that big a lion, when I bit 
him, would I have bit him or would I not?" 

But just then Freckles reached down and patted me 
on the head and said: "You wasn't afraid of him, was 
you, old Spot! Yes, sir, blood will tell!" 



BEING A PUBLIC CHARACTER 

(As told by the dog) 

Ever since I bit a circus lion, believing him to be 
another dog like myself, only larger, I have been what 
Doc Watson calls a Public Character in our town. 

Freckles, my boy, was a kind of a public character, 
too. He went around bragging about my noble blood 
and bravery, and all the other boys and dogs in town 
sort of looked up to him and thought how lucky he was 
to belong to a dog like me. And he deserved whatever 
glory he got of it, Freckles did. For, if I do say it my- 
self, there's not a dog in town got a better boy than my 
boy Freckles, take him all in all. I'll back him against 
any dog's boy that is anywhere near his size, for fight- 
ing, swimming, climbing, foot-racing, or throwing 
stones farthest and straightest. Or I'll back him 
against any stray boy, either. 

Well, some dogs may be born Public Characters, and 
like it. And some may be brought up to like it. I've 
seen dogs in those travelling Uncle Tom's Cabin shows 
that were so stuck on themselves they wouldn't hardly 
notice us town dogs. But with me, becoming a Public 
Character happened all in a flash, and it was sort of 
hard for me to get used to it. One day I was just a 

182 



BEING A PUBLIC CHARACTER 183 

private kind of a dog, as you might say, eating my 
meals at the Watson's back door, and pretending to 
hunt rats when requested, and not scratching off too 
many fleas in Doc Watson's drug store, and standing 
out from underfoot when told, and other unremarkable 
things like that. And the next day I had bit that lion 
and was a Public Character, and fame came so sudden 
I scarcely knew how to act. 

Even drummers from big places like St. Louis and 
Chicago would come into the drug store and look at my 
teeth and toe nails, as if they must be different from 
other dogs' teeth and toe nails. And people would 
come tooting up to the store in their little cars, and get 
out and look me over and say: 

''Well, Doc, what'll you take for him?" and Doc would 
wink, and say: 

"He's Harold's dog. You ask Harold." 
Which Harold is Freckles's other name. But any boy 
that calls him Harold outside of the schoolhouse has 
got a fight on his hands, if that boy is anywhere near 
Freckles's size. Harry goes, or Hal goes, but Harold 
is a fighting word with Freckles. Except, of course, 
with grown people. I heard him say one day to Tom 
Mulligan, his parents thought Harold was a name, or 
he guessed they wouldn't have given it to him; but it 
wasn't a name, it was a handicap. 

Freckles would always say, "Spot ain't for sale." 
And even Heinie Hassenyager, the butcher, got stuck 
on me after I got to be a Public Character. Heinie 
would come two blocks up Main Street with lumps of 



184 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

Hamburg steak, which is the kind someone has already 
chewed for you, and give them to me. Steak, mind 
you, not old gristly scraps. And before I became a 
Public Character Heinie even grudged me the bones I 
would drag out of the box under his counter when he 
wasn't looking. 

My daily hope was that I could live up to it all. I 
had always tried, before I happened to bite that lion, 
to be a friendly kind of a dog toward boys and humans 
and dogs, all three. I'd always been expected to do a 
certain amount of tail-wagging and be friendly. But 
as soon as I got to be a Public Character, I saw right 
away I wasn't expected to be too friendly any more. 
So, every now and then, I'd growl a little, for no reason 
at all. A dog that has bit a lion is naturally expected 
to have fierce thoughts inside of him; I could see that. 
And you have got to act the way humans expect you to 
act, if you want to slide along through the world with- 
out too much trouble. 

So when Heinie would bring me the ready-chewed 
steak I'd growl at him a little bit. And then I'd bolt 
and gobble the steak like I didn't think so derned much 
of it, after all, and was doing Heinie a big personal 
favour to eat it. And now and then I'd pretend I 
wasn't going to eat a piece of it unless it was chewed 
finer for me, and growl at him about that. 

That way of acting made a big hit with Heinie, too. 
I could see that he was honoured and flattered because 
I didn't go any further than just a growl. It gave him a 
chance to say he knew how to manage animals. And 



BEWG A PUBLIC CHARACTER 185 

the more I growled, the more steak he brought. Every- 
body in town fed me. I pretty near ate myself to death 
for a while there, besides all the meat I buried back of 
Doc Watson's store to dig up later. 

But my natural disposition is to be friendly. I 
would rather be loved than feared, which is what Bill 
Patterson, the village drunkard, used to say. When 
they put him into the calaboose every Saturday after- 
noon he used to look out between the bars on the back 
window and talk to the boys and dogs that had gathered 
round and say that he thanked them one and all for 
coming to an outcast's dungeon as a testimonial of 
affection, and he would rather be loved than feared. 
And my natural feelings are the same. I had to growl 
and keep dignified and go on being a Public Character, 
but often I would say to myself that it was losing me 
all my real friends, too. 

The worst of it was that people, after a week or so, 
began to expect me to pull something else remarkable. 
Freckles, he got up a circus, and charged pins and mar- 
bles, and cents when he found any one that had any, 
to get into it, and I was the principal part of that cir- 
cus. I was in a cage, and the sign over me read: 

SPOT, THE DOG THAT LICKED A LION 
TEN PINS ADMITTION 

To feed the lion-eater, one cent or two white chiney marbles 

extry but bring your own meat. 
Pat him once on the head twinty pins, kids under five not 

allowed to. 



186 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

For shaking hands with Spot the lion-eater, girls not allowed, 
gents three white chinies, or one aggie marble. 

Lead him two blocks down the street and back, one cent 
before starting, no marbles or pins taken for leading him. 

For sicking him on to cats three cents or one red cornelian 
marble if you furnish the cat. Five cents to use Watson's 
cat. Watson's biggest Tom-cat six cents must be paid 
before sicking. Small kids and girls not allowed to sick 
him on cats. 

Well, we didn't take in any cat-sicking money. And 
it was just as well. You never can tell what a cat will 
do. But Freckles put it in because it sounded sort of 
fierce. I didn't care for being caged and circused that 
way myself. And it was right at that circus that con- 
siderable trouble started. 

Seeing me in a cage like that, all famoused-up, with 
more meat poked through the slats than two d' ^ could 
eat, made Mutt iMulIigan and some of my oici iriends 
jealous. 

Mutt, he nosed up by the cage and sniffed. I nosed 
a piece of meat out of the cage to him. Mutt grabbed 
it and gobbled it down, but he didn't thank me any. 
Mutt, he says: 

'There's a new dog down town that says he blew 
in from Chicago. He says he used to be a Blind 
Man's Dog on a street corner there. He's a pretty 
wise dog, and he's a right ornery-looking dog, too. 
He's peeled considerably where he has been bit in 
fights." 

"Well, Mutt," says I, "as far as that goes I'm peeled 
considerable myself where I've been bit in fights." 



BEING A PUBLIC CHARACTER 187 

"I know you are, Spot," says Mutt. "You don't 
need to tell me that. I've peeled you some myself from 
time to time." 

"Yes," I says, "you did peel me some. Mutt. And 
I've peeled you some, too. More'n that, I notice that 
right leg of yours is a little stiff yet where I got to it 
about three weeks ago." 

"Well, then. Spot," says Mutt, "maybe you want to 
come down here and see what you can do to my other 

' three legs. I never saw the day I wouldn't give you a 
free bite at one leg and still be able to lick you on the 
other three." 

"You wouldn't talk that way if I was out of this 

; cage," I says, getting riled. 

1 "What did you ever let yourself be put into that fool 

'cage f^^ j^'Mutt says. "You didn't have to. You got 
such a swell head on you the last week or so that you 
gotto be licked. You can fool boys and humans all 
you want to about that accidental old lion, but us 
dogs got your number, all right. What that Blind 
Man's Dog from Chicago would do to you would be 

,,a plenty!" 

I "Well, then," I says, "I'll be out of this cage along 

I about supper time. Suppose you bring that Blind 
Man's Dog around here. And if he ain't got a spiked 
collar on to him, I'll fight him. I won't fight a spike- 

I collared dog to please anybody." 

I And I wouldn't, neither, without I had one on myself. 

^ If you can't get a dog by the throat or the back of his 
neck, what's the use of fighting him? You might just 



188 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

as well try to eat a blacksmith shop as fight one of those 
spike-collared dogs. 

"Hey, there!" Freckles yelled at Tom Mulligan, who 
is Mutt Mulligan's boy. "You get your fool dog away 
from the lion-eater's cage!" 

Tom, he histed Mutt away. But he says to Freckles, 
being jealous himself, "Don't be scared, Freck, I won't 
let my dog hurt yours any. Spot, he's safe. He's in 
a cage where Mutt can't get to him." 

Freckles got riled. He says, "I ain't in any cage, 
Tom." 

Tom, he didn't want to fight very bad. But all the 
other boys and dogs was looking on. And he'd sort of 
started it. He didn't figure that he could shut up that 
easy. And there was some girls there, too. 

"If I was to make a pass at you," says Tom, "you'd 
wish you was in a cage." 

Freckles, he didn't want to fight so bad, either. But 
he was running this circus, and he didn't feel he could! 
afford to pass by what Tom said too easy. So he says: 

"Maybe you think you're big enough to put me into a, 
cage." 

"If I was to make a pass at you," says Tom, "there^ 
wouldn't be enough left of you to put in a cage." 

"Well, then," says Freckles, "why don't you make a 
pass at me?" 

"Maybe you figure I don't dast to," says Tom. 

"I didn't say you didn't dast to," says Freckles;, 
"any one that says I said you didn't dast to is a link, 
link, liar, and so's his Aunt Mariar." 



BEING A PUBLIC CHARACTER 189 

Tom, he says, ''I ain't got any Aunt Mariar. And 
3^ou're another and dastn't back it." 

Then some of the other kids put chips on to their 
shoulders. And each dared the other to knock his chip 
off. And the other kids pushed and jostled them into 
each other till both chips fell off, and they went at it 
then. Once they got started they got really mad and 
each did all he knew how. 

And right in the midst of it Mutt run in and bit 
Freckles on the calf of his leg. Any dog will fight for 
his boy when his boy is getting the worst of it. But 
when Mutt did that I give a bulge against the wooden 
slats on the cage and two of them came off, and I was 
on top of Mutt The circus was in the barn, and the 
hens began to scream and the horses began to stomp, 
and all the boys yelled, ''Sick 'im!" and "Go to it!" 
and danced around and hollered, and the little girls 
yelled, and all the other dogs began to bark, and it was 
a right lively and enjoyable time. But Mrs. Watson, 
Freckles's mother, and the hired girl ran out from the 
house and broke the fight up. 

Grown women are like that. They don't want to 
fight themselves, and they don't seem to want any one 
else to have any fun. You gotto be a hypocrite around 
a grown woman to get along with her at all. And then 
she'll feed you and make a lot of fuss over you. But 
the minute you start anything with real enjoyment in it 
she's surprised to see you acting that way. Nobody 
was licked satisfactory in that fight, or licked any one 
else satisfactory. 



190 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

Well, that night after supper, along comes that Blind 
Man's Dog. Never did I see a Blind Man's Dog that 
was as tight-skinned. I ain't a dog that brags, myself, 
and I don't say I would have licked that heavy a dog 
right easy, even if he had been a loose-skinned dog. 
What I do say is that I had been used to fighting loose- 
skinned dogs that you can get some sort of a reasonable 
hold on to while you are working around for position. 
And running into a tight-skinned dog that way, all of 
a sudden and all unprepared for it, would make anybody 
nervous. How are you going to get a purchase on a 
tight-skinned dog when you've been fighting loose- 
skinned dogs for so long that your teeth and jaws just 
naturally set themselves for a loose-skinned dog with- 
out thinking of it? 

Lots of dogs wouldn't have fought him at all when 
they realized how they had been fooled about him, 
and how tight-skinned he was. But I was a Public 
Character now, and I had to fight him. More than that, 
I ain't ready to say yet that that dog actually licked 
me. Freckles he hit him in the ribs with a lump of 
soft coal, and he got off of me and run away before I 
got my second wind. There's no telling what I would 
have done to that Blind Man's Dog, tight-skinned as 
he was, if he hadn't run away before I got my second 
wind. 

Well, there's some mighty peculiar dogs in this world, 
let alone boys and humans. The word got around 
town, in spite of his running away like that before I got 
my second wind, that that Blind Man's Dog, so called. 



BEING A PUBLIC CHARACTER 191 

had actually licked me! Many pretended to believe it. 
Every time Freckles and me went down the street some- 
one would say: 

"Well, the dog that licked the lion got licked himself, 
did he?" 

And if it was a lady said it, Freckles would spit on 
the sidewalk through the place where his front teeth are 
out and pass on politely as if he hadn't heard, and say 
nothing. And if it was a man that said it Freckles 
would thumb his nose at him. And if it was a girl that 
said it he would rub a handful of sand into her hair. 
And if it was a boy anywhere near his size, there would 
be a fight. If it was too big a boy. Freckles would sling 
railroad iron at him. 

For a week or so it looked like Freckles and I were 
fighting all the time. Three or four times a day, and 
every day. On the way to school, and all through recess- 
times, and after school, and every time we went on to 
the street. I got so chewed and he got so busted up that 
we didn't hardly enjoy life. 

No matter how much you may like to fight, some of 
the time you would like to pick the fights yourself and 
not have other people picking them off of you. Kids 
begun to fight Freckles that wouldn't have dast to stand 
up to him a month before. I was still a Public Charac- 
ter, but 1 was getting to be the kind you josh about in- 
stead of the kind you are proud to feed. I didn't care 
so awful much for myself, but I hated it for Freckles. 
For when they got us pretty well hacked, all the boys 
began to call him Harold again. 



192 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

And after they had called him Harold for a week he 
must have begun to think of himself as Harold. For 
one Saturday afternoon when there wasn't any school, 
instead of going swimming with the other kids or play- 
ing baseball, or anything, he went and played with girls. 

He must have been pretty well down-hearted and felt 
himself pretty much of an outcast, or he wouldn't have 
done that. I am an honest dog, and the truth must 
be told, the disgrace along with everything else, and 
the truth is that he played with girls of his own accord 
that day — not because he was sent to their house on an 
errand, not because it was a game got up with boys and 
girls together, not because it was cousins and he couldn't 
dodge them, but because he was an outcast. Any boy 
will play with girls when all the boys and girls are play- 
ing together, and some girls are nearly as good as boys; 
but no boy is going off alone to look up a bunch of girls 
and play with them without being coaxed unless he has 
had considerable of a down-fall. 

Right next to the side of our yard was the Wilkinses. 
They had a bigger house and a bigger yard than ours. 
Freckles was sitting on the top of the fence looking, 
into their orchard when the three Wilkins girls came out 
to play. There was only two boys in the Wilkins fam- 
ily, and they was twins; but they were only year-old 
babies and didn't amount to anything. The two old- 
est Wilkins girls, the taffy-coloured-haired one and the 
squint-eyed one, each had one of the twins, taking 
care of it. And the other Wilkins girl, the pretty one, 
she had one of those big dolls made as big as a baby. 



BEWG A PUBLIC CHARACTER 193 

They were rolling those babies and the doll around the 
grass in a wheelbarrow, and the wheel came off, and 
that's how Freckles happened to go over. 

"Up in the attic," says the taffy-coloured-haired one, 
when he had fixed up the wheelbarrow, "there's a little 
old express wagon with one wheel off that would be 
better'n this wheelbarrow. Maybe you could fix that 
wheel on, too, Harold." 

Freckles, he fell for it. After he got the wagon fixed, 
they got to playing charades and fool girl games like 
that. The hired girl was off for the afternoon, and 
pretty soon Mrs. Wilkins hollered up the stairs that she 
was going to be gone for an hour, and to take 
good care of the twins, and then we were alone in 
the place. 

Well, it wasn't much fun for me. They played and 
they played, and I stuck to Freckles — which his name 
was called nothing but Harold all that afternoon, and 
for the first time 1 said to myself "Harold" seemed to fit. 
I stuck to him because a dog should stick to his boy, 
and a boy should stick to his dog, no matter what the 
disgrace. But after while I got pretty tired and lay 
down on a rug, and a new kind of flea struck me. After 
I had chased him down and cracked him with my teeth 
I went to sleep. 

I must have slept pretty sound and pretty long. All 
of a sudden I waked up with a start, and almost choking, 
for the place was smoky. I barked and no one an- 
swered. 

I ran out on to the landing, and the whole house was 



194 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

full of smoke. The house was on fire, and it looked 
like I was alone in it. I went down the back stairway, 
which didn't seem so full of smoke, but the door that 
let out on to the first-floor landing was locked, and I 
had to go back up again. 

By the time I got back up, the front stairway was 
a great deal fuller of smoke, and I could see glints of 
flame winking through it way down below. But it was 
my only way out of that place. On the top step I stum- 
bled over a gray wool bunch of something or other, and 
I picked it up in my mouth. Thinks I, "That is Freck- 
les's gray sweater, that he is so stuck on. I might as 
well take it down to him." 

It wasn't so hard for a lively dog to get out of a place 
like that, I thought. But I got kind of confused and 
excited, too. And it struck me all of a sudden, by the 
time I was down to the second floor, that that sweater 
weighed an awful lot. 

I dropped it on the second floor, and ran into one of 
the front bedrooms and looked out. 

By jings! the whole town was in the front yard and in 
the street. 

And in the midst of the crowd was Mrs. Wilkins, 
carrying on like mad. 

"My baby!" she yelled. "Save my baby. Let me 
loose! I'm going after my baby!" 

I stood up on my hind legs, with my head just out 
of that bedroom window, and the flame and smoke 
licking up all around me, and barked. 

"My doggie! My doggie!" yells Freckles, who was 



BEING A PUBLIC CHARACTER 195 

in the crowd, ''I must save my doggie!" And he made 
a run for the house, but someone grabbed him and 
slung him back. 

And Mrs. Wilkins made a run, but they held her, 
too. The front of the house was one sheet of flame. 
Old Pop Wilkins, Mrs. Wilkins's husband, was jump- 
ing up and down in front of Mrs. Wilkins yelling, here 
was her baby. He had a real baby in one arm and 
that big doll in the other, and was so excited he thought 
he had both babies. Later I heard what had happened. 
The kids had thought they were getting out with both 
twins but one of them had saved the doll and left a 
twin behind. The squint-eyed girl and the taffy- 
coloured-haired girl and the pretty girl was howling as 
loud as their mother. And every now and then some 
man would make a rush for the front door, but the fire 
would drive him back. And everyone was yelling advice 
to-everyone else, except one man who was calling on the 
whole town to get him an axe. The volunteer fire 
engine was there, but there wasn't any water to squirt 
through it, and it had been backed up too near the house 
and had caught fire and was burning up. \ 

Well, I thinks that baby will likely turn up in the 
crowd somewhere, after all, and I'd better get out of 
there myself while the getting was good. I ran out 
of the bedroom, and run into that bunched-up gray 
bundle again. 

I ain't saying that I knew it was the missing twin 
in a gray shawl when I picked it up the second time. 
And I ain't saying that I didn't know it. But the fact 



196 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

is that I did pick it up. I don't make any brag that 
I would have risked my life to save Freckles's sweater. 
It may be I was so rattled I just picked it up because 
I had had it in my mouth before and didn't quite know 
what I was doing. 

But the record is something you can't go behind, and 
the record is that I got out the back way and into the 
back yard with that bundle swinging from my mouth, 
and walked round into the front yard and laid that 
bundle down — and it zvas the twin! 

I don't make any claim that I knew it was the twin 
till I got into the front 3^ard, mind you. But you can't 
prove I didn't know it was. 

And nobody tried to prove it. The gray bundle let 
out a squall. 

"My baby!" yells Mrs. Wilkins. And she kissed me! 
I rubbed it oflF with my paw. And then the taffy- 
coloured-haired one kissed me. And the first thing I 
knew the pretty one kissed me. But when I saw the 
squint-eyed one coming I got behind Freckles and 
barked. 

'Three cheers for Spot !" yelled the whole town. And 
they give them. 

And then I saw what the lay of the land was, so I 
wagged my tail and barked. 

It called for that hero stuff, and I throwed my head 
up and looked noble — and pulled it. 

An hour before Freckles and me had been outcasts. 
And now we was Public Characters again. We walked 
down Main Street, and we owned it. And we hadn't 



BEING A PUBLIC CHARACTER 197 

any more than got to Doc Watson's drug store than in 
rushed Heinie Hassenyager with a lump of Hamburg 
steak, and with tears in his eyes. 

"It's got chicken livers mixed in it, too!" says Heinie. 

I ate it. But while I ate it, I growled at him. 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 
(As told by the dogs) 

Never did I suppose that I would be a bloodhound 
in an "Uncle Tom's Cabin" show. But I have been one, 
and my constant wish is that it has not made me too 
proud and haughty. For proud and haughty dogs, 
sooner or later, all have their downfalls. The dog that 
was the rightful bloodhound in that show was the 
proudest and haughtiest dog I ever met, and he had 
his downfall. 

Other proud and haughty dogs I have seen, in my 
time; and some of them I have licked, and some of them 
have licked me. For instance, there was the one that 
used to be a blind man's dog on a street corner in 
Chicago. He was a tough, loud-barking, red-eyed dog, 
full of suspiciousness and fleas; and his disposition 
was so bad that it was even said that if one of his fleas 
bit an ordinary dog, that ordinary dog would swell up 
where he was bit as if a hornet had stung him. He was 
proud of those fleas and proud of being that ornery; 
but he had his downfall. 

Another proud and haughty dog I knew belonged to 
the dog and pony part of a circus that came to our town 
once. He sat in a little cart in the street parade, with 

198 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 199 

a clown's hat and jacket on, and drove a Shetland pony. 
You couldn't get him into a fight; he would just grin and 
say he was worth too much money to risk himself in 
a fight, especially as the money he was worth did not 
belong to him anyhow, but to the circus that owned him. 
He said it wouldn't be honest to risk other people's 
money just because he wanted to fight; but I have 
never believed that he really wanted to fight. He 
grinned mostly all the time, a conceited kind of grin, 
and he would up-end himself and stand on his head for 
you to admire him, and then flop over and bark and 
look proud of his own tricks and proud of the money 
he was worth. But he had his downfall right in the 
midst of his greatest pride, for a brindle Tom-cat with 
one eye went after him right in the middle of that 
street parade, and he left that cart very quickly, and it 
nearly broke up the parade. 

But the proudest and haughtiest of all was the blood- 
hound that owned that Uncle Tom show — leastways, he 
acted as if he owned it. It was a show that showed in 
a tent, like a regular circus, and it stayed in our town 
three days. It had a street parade, too; and this blood- 
hound was led along at the head of the street parade 
with a big heavy muzzle on, and he was loaded down 
with chains and shackles so he could hardly walk. Be- 
sides the fellow that led him, there were two more 
men that followed along behind him and held on to 
chains that were fastened to his collar. In front of him 
marched the Uncle Tom of that show; and every now 
and then the bloodhound would struggle to get at Uncle 



200 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

Tom and be pulled back. He was a very dangerous- 
looking dog, and you thought to yourself what a lot of 
damage he would probably do if he was ever to bite 
those chains to pieces and eat up those three men that 
held him and chew Uncle Tom and then run loose into 
the world. Every step he took he would toss his head 
and jangle those chains and growl. 

After the parade was over, a lot of us dogs and boys 
went down to the lot where the show was to be held. 
We were hanging around the tent where the actors 
were eating, and that bloodhound dog was there without 
chains like any other dog, and us dogs got to talking 
with him. 

"You country-town dogs," he says to Mutt Mulligan, 
who is a friend of mine and some considerable dog 
himself, "don't want to come fussin' around too close 
to my cook tent or my show! Us troupers ain't got 
any too much use for you hick dogs, anyhow." 

"Oh, it's your show, is it?" says Mutt. 

"Whose show did you think it was?" says that blood- 
hound dog, very haughty. 

"I thought from all those chains and things, maybe 
the show owned you, instead of you owning the show," 
says Mutt. 

"You saw who led that street parade, didn't you?" 
says the bloodhound dog. "Well, that ought to tell 
you who the chief actor of this show is. This here show 
is built up around me. If anything was to happen to 
me, there couldn't be any show." 

Mutt, he gave me a signal with his tail to edge in 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 201 

a little closer, and I sidled up to where I could grab a 
front leg unexpected to him, if he made a pass at Mutt. 
And then Mutt says, sneering so his teeth stuck out 
and his nose wrinkled: 

"Something's goin' to happen to you, if you ain't 
more polite and peaceable in your talk." 

"What's goin' to happen to me?" says that bloodhound 
dog. 

"Don't you let them bristles rise around your neck," 
says Mutt, "or you'll find out what's goin' to happen 
to you." 

"Whose bristles are they?" says that bloodhound 
dog. 

"It don't make any difference whose bristles they 
are," says Mutt. "No dog can stick his bristles up 
into my face like that and get away with it. When I 
see bristles stand up, I take it personal." 

But just then Old Uncle Zeb White, who is coloured, 
come amoseyin' along, and that Tom-show dog barked 
out: 

"Somebody hold me! Quick! Somebody muzzle 
me! Somebody better put my chains on to me again! 
Somebody better tell that coloured man to clear out of 
here! I've been trained to chase coloured men! What 
do they mean by letting that coloured man get near my 
show tent?" 

Old Uncle Zeb, he is the quietest and most peaceable 
person anywhere, amongst dogs, boys, or humans, and 
the janitor of the Baptist church. He is the only col- 
oured man in our town, and is naturally looked up to 



202 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

and respected with a good deal of admiration and cu- 
riosity on that account, and also because he is two 
hundred years old. He used to be the bodyservant of 
General George Washington, he says, until General 
Washington set him free. And then along comes Abra- 
ham Lincoln after a while and sets him free again, he 
says. And being set free by two prominent men like 
that. Uncle Zeb figures he is freer than anybody else, 
and I have heard him tell, time and again, how he 
can't speak kindly enough of them two white gentle- 
men. 

"Don't anybody sick me on to that coloured man,'' 
says this bloodhound dog. "If I was to be sicked 
on to that coloured man, this whole town couldn't pull 
me off again ! I been trained to it, I tell you !" 

Which it was easy enough to see he really didn't 
want to start anything; it was just his pride and haugh- 
tiness working in him. Just then Freckles Watson, who 
\ is my boy that I own, and Tom Mulligan, who is Mutt 
Mulligan's boy, both says: "Sick 'im!" Not that they 
understood what us dogs was talking about, but they 
saw me and Mutt sidling around that Tom-show dog, 
and it looked to them like a fight could be commenced. 
But the Tom-show dog, when he heard that "Sick 'im!" 
jumped and caught Uncle Zeb by a leg of his trousers. 
Then Uncle Zeb's own dog, which his name is Burning 
Deck after a piece Uncle Zeb heard recited one time, 
comes a-bulging and a-bouncing through the crowd and 
grabs that Tom-show dog by the neck. 

They rolled over and over, and into the eating tent, 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 203 

and under the table. The actors jumped up, and the 
table got tipped over, and the whole meal and the tin 
dishes they was eating oU of and all the actors and the 
benches and the dogs was wallowing and banging and 
kicking and barking and shouting on the ground in a 
mess, and all of us other dogs run in to help Burning 
Deck lick that bloodhound, and all the boys followed 
their dogs in to see a square deal, and then that tent 
come down on top of everything, and believe me it was 
some enjoyable time. And I found quite a sizeable 
piece of meat under there in the mix-up, and I thinks 
to myself I better eat that while I can get it, so I crawled 
out with it. Outside is sitting Uncle Zeb, watching 
that fallen-down tent heaving and twisting and squirm- 
ing, and I heard him say to himself: 

"White folks is allers gittin' up some kin' of entuh- 
tainment fo' us cullud people to look at! Us cullud 
people suah does git treated fine in dese heah Nothe'n 
towns!" 

Pretty soon everybody comes crawling out from under 
that tent, and they straightens her up, and the boss of 
the show begins to talk like Uncle Zeb has done the 
whole thing, and Uncle Zeb just sits on the grass and 
smiles and scratches his head. And finally the boss of 
the show says to Uncle Zeb could he hire Burning Deck 
for the bloodhound's part? Because Burning Deck 
has just about chewed that proud and haughty dog to 
pieces, and they've got to have a bloodhound! 

"No, suh," says Uncle Zeb. "No, suh! I thank yo' 
kindly fo' yo' offer, suh, but Burnin' Deck, he ain't 



204 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

gwine inter no show whah he likely ter be sicked on ter 
no cullud pusson. Burnin' Deck, he allers been a good 
Republican, bringed up that-a-way, des de same as me, 
an' we ain't gwine ter take no paht in any gwines-on 
agin' de cullud nation." 

''But see here," says the boss. "In this show the 
coloured people get all the best of it. In this show the 
coloured people go to Heaven!" 

Uncle Zeb says he had heard a good deal about that 
Uncle Tom show in his life, first and last, and because 
he had heard so much, he went to see it one time. And 
he says if getting chased by bloodhounds and whipped 
by whips is giving them the best of it, he hopes he never 
obtains admission to any show where they get the worst 
of it. The boss, he says that show is the show that 
helped make the coloured people free, and Uncle Zeb 
ought to be proud of Burning Deck acting in it. But 
Uncle Zeb says he ain't to be fooled; it was General 
Washington set 'em free first, and Abraham Lincoln 
set 'em free the second time, and now President Wilson 
is licking them Germans and setting them free again. 
And as for him, he says, he will stick to his own white 
folks that he knows and janitors for and whose clothes 
fit him, and Burning Deck will do the same. And as far 
as them Tom-show coloured folks' going to heaven is 
concerned, he reckons he don't want to be chased there 
by no bloodhounds; and it ain't likely that a man that 
has janitored for a Baptist church as faithful as he has 
would go anywhere else, anyhow. So he takes Burning 
Deck and goes along home. 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 205 

"IVe got to have a dog," says the boss, watching them 
get the tent fixed up, and rubbing his head. 

"Would Spot do?" says Freckles, which is my boy, 
Spot being me. 

Well, I never expected to be an actor, as I said before. 
But they struck a bargain, which Freckles was to get 
free admission to that show, and I was to be painted 
and dyed up some and be a bloodhound. Which the 
boss said the regular bloodhound which Burning Deck 
had eat so much of wasn't really a bloodhound, anyhow, 
but only a big mongrel with bloodhound notions in 
his head. 

Well, maybe you've seen that show. Which all the 
bloodhound has to do is to run across the stage chasing 
that Uncle Tom, and Freckles was to run across with 
me, so there wasn't much chance to go wrong. 

And nothing would have gone wrong if it hadn't 
been for Burning Deck. Uncle Zeb White must have 
got over his grouch against that show, for there he was 
sitting in the front row with a new red handkerchief 
around his throat and his plug hat on his knees, and 
Burning Deck was there with him. I never had any- 
thing but liking for Uncle Zeb, for he knows where to 
scratch dogs. But Burning Deck and me have never 
been close friends, on account of him being jealous 
when Uncle Zeb scratches you too long. He even is 
jealous when Uncle Zeb scratches a pig, which all the 
pigs in town that can get loose have a habit of coming 
to Uncle Zeb's cottage to be scratched, and they say 
around town that some of those pigs never find their 



206 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

way home again. Squeals have been heard coming 
from Uncle Zeb's kitchen, but the rest of the pigs never 
seem to learn. 

But no self-respecting dog would be jealous if his boss 
scratched a pig. For after all, what is a pig? It is 
just a pig, and that is all you can say for it. A pig 
is not a person; a pig is something to eat. But Burning 
Deck is a peculiar dog, and he gets ideas into his head. 
And so, right in the midst of the show, when I chased 
that coloured man across the stage, Burning Deck all of 
a sudden jumped up on to the platform and grabbed me. 
I would have licked him then and there, but what was 
left of the show's bloodhound come crawling out on to 
the stage dragging two of his legs, and Burning Deck 
turned from me to him, and then all the actors run on to 
the stage to save what was left of the bloodhound, and 
Si Emery, the city marshal, threw open his coat so 
you could see his big star and climbed on to the stage 
and arrested everybody, and somebody dropped the 
curtain down right into the midst of it. 

And the way it happened, on the outside of the cur- 
tain was left Freckles and me and the Little Eva of that 
show, which she is beautiful, with long yellow hair and 
pink cheeks and white clothes like an angel. And be- 
fore Freckles could stop her, she took hold of him by 
the hand and says to the audience won't they please 
be kind to the poor travelling troupers and not let them 
be under arrest, and let the show go on? And she cried 
considerable, and all through her crying you could hear 
Si Emery behind the curtain arresting people; and 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 207 

after while some of the women in the audience got to 
crying, too, and the city fathers was all in the audience, 
and they went up on to the stage and told Si, for the 
sake of Little Eva, to release everyone he had arrested, 
and after that the show went on. 

Well, after the show was out, quite a lot of the dogs 
and boys that was friends of mine and of Freckles was 
waiting for us. Being in a show like that made us 
heroes. But some of them were considerably jealous 
of us, too, and there would have been some fights, but 
Freckles says kind of dignified that he does not care to 
fight until his show is out of town, but after that he will 
take on any and all who dare — that is, he says, if he 
doesn't decide to go with that show, which the show is 
crazy to have him do. And me and him and Stevie 
Stevenson, which is his particular chum, goes off and 
sets down on the schoolhouse steps, and Stevie tells 
him what a good actor he was, running across the stage 
with me after that Uncle Tom. But Freckles, he is 
sad and solemn, and he only fetches a sigh. 

"What's eatin' you. Freckles?" Stevie asks him. 
Freckles, he sighs a couple of times more, and then he 
says: 

"Stevie, I'm in love." 

"Gosh, Freckles," says Stevie. "Honest?" 

"Honest Injun," says Freckles. 

"Do you know who with?" says Stevie. 

"Uh-huh!" says Freckles. "If you didn't know who 
with, how would you know you was?" 

But Stevie, he says you might be and not know who 



208 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

with, easy enough. Once, he says, he was like that. 
He says he was feeling kind of queer for a couple of 
weeks last spring, and they dosed him and dosed him, 
with sassafras and worm-medicine and roots and herbs, 
and none of it did any good. His mother says it is 
growing-pains, and his father says it is either laziness 
and not wanting to hoe in the garden or else it is a 
tapeworm. And he thinks himself maybe it is be- 
cause he is learning to chew and smoke tobacco on the 
sly and keeps swallowing a good deal of it right along. 
But one day he hears his older sister and another big 
girl talking when they don't know he is around, and 
they are in love, both of them, and from what he can 
make out, their feelings is just like his. And it come 
to him all of a sudden he must be in love himself, and 
it was days and days before he found out who it was 
that he was in love with. 

"Who was it?" asks Freckles. 

"It turned out to be Mabel Smith," says Stevie, "and 
I was scared plumb to death for a week or two that she 
would find out about it. I used to put toads down her 
back and stick burrs into her hair so she wouldn't never 
guess it." 

Stevie says he went through days and days of it;, 
and for a while he was scared that it might last forever, 
and he don't ever want to be in love again. Suppose it 
should be found out on a fellow that he was in love? 

"Stevie," says Freckles, "this is different." 

Stevie asks him how he means. 

"I want her to know," says Freckles. 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 209 

"Great Scott!" says Stevie. "No!" 

"Uh-huh!" 

"It don't show on you, Freckles/' says Stevie. 

Freckles says of course it don't show. Only first 
love shows, he says. Once before he was in love, he 
says, and that showed on him. That was last spring, 
and he was only a kid then, and he was in love with 
Miss Jones, the school teacher, and didn't know how 
to hide it. But this time he can hide it, because this 
time he feels that it is different. He swallows down 
the signs of it, he says, the way you keep swallowing 
down the signs of it when you have something terrible 
like heart-disease or stomach-trouble, and nobody 
will ever know it about him, likely, till after he is dead. 

And when he is dead, Freckles says, they will all 
wonder what he died of, and maybe he will leave a note, 
wrote in his own blood, to tell. And they will all come 
in Injun file and pass through the parlour, he says, where 
his casket will be set on to four chairs, and She will come 
filing by and look at him, and she will say not to bury 
him yet, for there is a note held tight in his hand. 

And everybody will say: "A note? A note? Who 
can it be to?" 

And She will say to pardon her for taking the liberty 
at a time like this, but She has saw her own name 
on to that note. And then. Freckles says. She will open 
it and read it out loud right there in the parlour to all 
of them, and they will all say how the departed must 
have liked her to draw up a note to her wrote in his 
own blood like that. 



210 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

And then, Freckles says, She will say, yes, he must 
have liked her, and that she liked him an awful lot, 
too, but She never knew he liked her, and She wished 
now she had of known he liked her an awful lot, be- 
cause to write a note in his own blood like that showed 
that he liked her an awful lot, and if he only was alive 
now she would show she liked him an awful lot and 
would kiss him to show it. And she would not be scared 
to kiss him in front of all those people standing around 
the sides of the parlour, dead or alive. And then she 
would kiss him, Freckles says. And maybe. Freckles 
says, he wouldn't be dead after all, but only just lying 
there like the boy that travelled around with the 
hypnotizer who was put in a store window and laid 
there all the time the hypnotizer was in town with every- 
body making bets whether they could see him breathing 
or not. And then. Freckles says, he would get up out 
of his casket, and his Sunday suit with long pants 
would be on, and he would take the note and say: "Yes, 
it is to you, and I wrote it with my own blood!'* 

Which, Freckles says, he has a loose tooth he could 
suck blood out of any time, not wanting to scrape his 
arm on account of blood poison breaking out. Though 
he says he had thought of using some of Spot's blood, 
but that would seem disrespectful, somehow. And the 
tooth-blood seemed disrespectful, too, for he did not 
know the girl right well. But it would have to be the 
tooth-blood, he guessed, for there was a fellow out by 
the county line got lockjaw from blood poison breaking 
out on him, and died of it. And when She handed him 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 211 

the note. Freckles says, he would tell the people in the 
narlour: "Little Eva and I forgive you all!" 

"Little Eva!" says Stevie. "Gosh all fish hooks, 
Freckles, it ain't the girl in the show, is it?" 

"Uh-huh!" says Freckles, kind of sad and proud. 

"Freckles," says Stevie, after they had both set there 
and thought, saying nothing, for a while, "I got just 
one more question to ask you : Are you figuring you will 
get married? Is it as bad as that?" 

"Uh-huh!" says Freckles. 

Stevie, he thought for another while, and then he 
got up and put his hand on to Freckles's shoulder. 

"Freckles, old scout," he says, "good-bye. I'm awful 
sorry for you, but I can't chase around with you any 
more. I can't be seen running with you. I won't tell 
this on you, but if it was ever to come out I wouldn't 
want to be too thick with you. You know what the 
Dalton Gang would do to you, Freck, if they ever got 
on to this. I won't blab, but I can't take no risks about 
chumming with you." 

And he went away and left Freckles and me sitting 
there. But in a minute he came back and said: 

"Freckles, you know that iron sling-shot crotch of 
mine? You always used to be stuck on that sling- 
shot crotch, Freckles, and I never would trade it to you. 
Well, Freckles, you can have that darned old iron sling- 
shot crotch free for nothing!" 

"Stevie," says Freckles, "I don't want it." 

"Gosh!" says Stevie, and he went off, shaking his 
head. 



212 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

And I was considerable worried myself. I tagged 
him along home, and he wasn't natural. He went into 
the house, and I tagged him along in and up to his 
room, and he took no notice of me, though I'm not sup- 
posed to be there at all. 

And what do you suppose that kid did? — he went and 
washed his ears. It was midnight, and there wasn't 
any one to make him do it, and there wasn't any one 
to see his ears but me, but he washed 'em careful, in- 
side and out. And then he wet his hair and combed it. 
First he parted it on one side, and then he parted it 
on the other, and then he blushed and parted it in 
the middle. I was sitting on the floor by the foot of the 
bed, and he was facing the looking-glass, but I saw the 
blush because it spread clear around to the back of his 
neck. 

And then he went to the closet and put on his long 
pants that belonged to his Sunday suit. The looking- 
glass wasn't big enough so he could see his hair and his 
long pants all at the same time, but he tilted the glass 
and squirmed and twisted around and saw them bit by 
bit. At first I thought maybe he was going out again, 
even at that time of night, but he wasn't; all he was 
doing was admiring himself. Just then his father 
pounded on the wall and asked him if he wasn't in 
bed yet, and he said he was going. He put the 
light out right away. But he didn't go to bed. He 
just sat in the dark with his clean ears and his long 
pants on and his hair parted in the middle, and several 
times before I went to sleep myself I heard him sigh 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 213 

and say: "Little Eva! Little Eva's dying! Little 
Eva!'' 

He must have got so tired he forgot to undress, 
staying up that late and everything, for in the morning 
when his father pounded on the door he didn't answer. 
I was under the bed, and I stayed there. Pretty soon 
his father pounded again, and then he came into the 
room. And there Freckles was lying on the bed with 
his Sunday pants on and his hair parted in the middle 
and his ears clean. 

"Harold!" says his father, and shook him, "what 
does this mean?" 

Harold is Freckles's other name, but if any one of 
his size calls him Harold, there will be a fight. He sat 
up on the bed and says, still sleepy: 

"What does what mean, Pa?" 

"Your lying there asleep with your clothes on," says 
his father. 

"I was dressing, and I went to sleep again," says 
Freckles. 

"Uh-huh!" says his father. "It looks like it, don't it?" 

"Yes, sir," says Freckles. 

I had crawled out to the foot of the bed where I 
could see them, and he was still sleepy, but he was 
trying hard to think up something. 

"It looks a lot like it," says his father. "If you had 
slept in that bed, the covers would have been turned 
down, wouldn't they?" 

"Yes, sir," says Freckles, looking at them. 

"Well, what then?" says his father. 



214 THE REVOLT OE THE OYSTER 

"Well, Pa/' says Freckles, "I guess I must have made 
that bed up again in my sleep, and I never knew it." 

"Humph!" says his father. "Do you do that often?" 

"Yes, sir," says Freckles, "a good deal lately." 

"Harold," says his father, real interested, "aren't 
you feeling well these days?" 

"No, Pa," says Freckles, "I ain't felt so very well 
for quite a while." 

"Humph!" says his pa. "How does it come when 
you dressed yourself you put on your Sunday pants, and 
this is only Tuesday?" 

Harold says he guesses he did that in his sleep, too, 
the same time he made the bed up. 

His pa wants to know if that has ever happened to 
him before. 

"Yes, sir," says Freckles, "once I woke up in the moon- 
light right out on one of the top limbs of the big maple 
tree in the front yard, with my Sunday suit on." 

"Humph!" says his father. "And was your hair 
parted in the middle that time, too?" 

Freckles, he blushes till you can hardly see his freck- 
les, and feels of his hair. But he is so far in, now, that 
he can't get out. So he says : 

"Yes, sir, every time I get taken that way, so I go 
around in my sleep, Pa, I find my hair has been parted 
in the middle, the next morning." 

"Uh-huh!" says his pa. "Let's see your ears." And 
he pinched one of them while he was looking at it, 
and Freckles says, "Ouch!" 
' "I thought so," savs his pa, but didn't say what he 



WRITTEN JN BLOOD 215 

thought right away. Then pretty soon he sayst *Those 
ears have been washed since that neck has." 

"Yes, sir/' says Freckles. 

"Did you do that in your sleep, too?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Do you always do that when you have those spells 
of yours?" 

"Yes, sir, I always find my ears have been washed 
the next morning." 

"But never your neck?" 

"Sometimes my neck has, and sometimes it hasn't," 
said Freckles. 

"Uh-huh!" says his father, and took notice of me. 
I wagged my tail, and hung my tongue out, and acted 
friendly and joyful and happy. If you want to stay 
on good terms with grown-up humans, you have to 
keep them jollied along. I wasn't supposed to be in 
the house at night, anyhow, but I hoped maybe it would 
be overlooked. 

"Did you paint and dye that dog up that way?" asked 
Freckles's father. For of course the paint and dye 
they had put on me was still there. 

"Yes, sir," says Freckles. "Nearly always when I 
come to myself in the morning I find 1 have dyed Spot." 

"That's queer, too," said his father. And then Harold 
says he dyes other dogs, too, and once when he woke 
up in the maple tree there were three strange dogs he 
had dyed at the foot of it. 

"Harold," says his father, "how often do these spells 
come on?" 



216 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

Freckles, he says, some weeks they come often and 
some weeks hardly ever. 

"Humph!" says his father. "And when they come 
on, do you notice it is harder for you to tell the truth 
than at any other times?" 

Freckles says he doesn't know what he says in his 
sleep when those spells take him, nor even whether he 
talks in his sleep or not, but he guesses if he does talk 
in his sleep what he says would be talk about his dreams, 
but he can't remember what his dreams are, so he 
doesn't know whether what he says is true or not. 

"Uh-huh!" says his father. "Harold, do you own 
a gun?" 

"No, sir," says Harold. Which is true, for he only 
owns a third interest in a gun. Tom Mulligan and 
Stevie Stevenson own the rest of it, and they are keep- 
ing it hid in the rafters of Tom Mulligan's barn till they 
can save money enough to get it fixed so it will shoot. 

"You haven't killed anybody in these spells of yours, 
have you, Harold?" asks his father. 

"No, sir," says Freckles. 

"How would you know if you had?" asks his father. 

Freckles says there would be blood on him next morn- 
ing, wouldn't there? 

"Not," says his father, "if you stood at a distance 
and killed them with a gun." 

Freckles knows he hasn't ever really had any of these 
spells he says he has had, but from his looks I should 
judge he was scared, too, by the way his father was 
acting. 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 217 

"Pa/' he says, "has any one been found dead?" 

'The body hasn't been found yet/' says his father, 
"but from what I heard you say, early this morning in 
your sleep, I should judge one will be found/' 

I thinks to myself maybe Freckles does do things in 
his sleep after all, and from the looks of his face he 
thinks so, too. He is looking scared. 

"Pa," he says, "who did I kill? What did I say?" 

"You said: 'Little Eva's dying! Little Eva's 
dying!' " said his father. "I heard you say it over and 
over again in your sleep." 

Freckles, he gets red in the face again, and stares at 
his feet, and his pa stands and grins at him for a minute 
or two. And then his pa says: "Get into your week- 
day clothes and wash your face and neck to match your 
ears, and come on down to breakfast. When you get 
ready to tell what's on your mind, all right; but don't 
try to tell lies to your dad." 

"Yes, sir," says Freckles. 

But he looked mighty gloomy. And when his father 
went out of the room he got his fountain pen and sucked 
some blood out of his loose tooth and tried to spit it 
into his fountain pen. From which I judged he was 
still of a notion to write that letter and was pretty low 
in his mind. But he couldn't spit it into the pen, right. 
And he cried a little, and then saw me watching him 
crying and slapped at me with a hairbrush; and then 
he petted me and I let him pet me, for a dog, if he is 
any sort of dog at all, will always stand by his boy in 
trouble as well as gladness, and overlook things. A 



218 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER ^ 

boy hasn't got much sense, anyhow; and a boy without 
a dog to keep him steered right must have a pretty 
tough time in the world. 

If he was low in his mind then, he was lower in his 
mind before the day was through. For after breakfast 
there was Stevie Stevenson and Tom Mulligan waiting 
for him outside, and in spite of his promise, Stevie has 
told everything to Tom. And Tom has a wart and 
offers some wart blood to write that letter in. But 
Freckles says another person's blood would not be fair 
and honourable. He has a wart of his own, if he 
wanted to use wart blood, but wart blood is not to be 
thought of. What would a lady think if she found out 
it was wart blood? It would be almost and insult, wart 
blood would; it would be as bad as blood from a corn 
or bunion. 

''Well, then/' says Stevie, "the truth is that you 
don't want to write that letter, anyhow. Last night 
you talked big about writing that letter, but this morn- 
ing you're hunting up excuses for not writing it." 

"I'll write it if I want to write it, and you can't stop 
me," says Freckles. "And I won't write it if I don't 
want to write it, and nobody of your size can make me." 

"I can too stop you," says Stevie, "if I want to." 

"You don't dast to want to stop me," says Freckles. 

"I do dast," says Stevie. 

"You don't," says Freckles. 

"I do," says Stevie. 

"You're a licked, licked liar — and so's your Aunf 
Mariar," says Freckles. 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 219 

"I ain't got any Aunt Mariar," says Stevie. 

*Tou don't dast to have an Aunt Mariar/' says 
Freckles. 

"I do dast/' says Stevie. 

Then Tom put a chip on each of their shoulders, and 
pushed them at each other, and the chips fell off, and 
they went down behind the barn and had it out, and 
Freckles licked him. Which proves Freckles couldn't be 
stopped from writing that note if he wanted to, and he 
was still so mad that he wrote it right then and there 
back of the barn on a leaf torn out of a notebook Tom 
Mulligan owned, with his fountain pen, using his own 
nose bleed that Stevie had just drawed out of him ; and 
he read out loud what he wrote. It was : 

Dear Miss Little Eva: The rose is red, the violet's blue. 
Sugar is sweet and so are you. Yours truly. Mr. H. Watson. 
This is wrote in my own blood. 

"Well, now, then," says Stevie, "where's the coffm?" 

"What do you mean, the coffin?" says Freckles. 

"Last night," says Stevie, "you was makin' a lot of 
brags, but this morning it looks like you didn't have the 
sand to act up to them." 

"If you think you've got size enough to make me lay 
down into a coffin with that note," says Freckles, "you 
got another think comin' to you. There ain't a kid 
my size, nor anywhere near my size, in this whole town 
can make me lay down into a coffin with that note. 
And if you think so, you just try it on !" 

Stevie, he doesn't want to fight any more. But Tom 



220 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

Mulligan says never mind the casket. Nobody really 
wants him to lay in a casket anyhow. He says he is 
willing to bet a million dollars Freckles doesn't dast to 
carry that note to the show grounds and give it to that 
Little Eva. 

*'\ dast!" says Freckles. 

"Dastn't!" says Tom. 

''You don't dast to knock this chip off my shoulder/' 
says Freckles. 

''I dast!" says Tom. And Stevie give him a push, 
and he did it. And they had it. Freckles got him 
down and jammed his head into the ground. 

"Now, then," he says, "do I dast to carry that note, 
or don't I dast to?" 

"You dast to," says Tom. "Leave me up." 

And that was the way it come about that Freckles 
had to carry the note, though not wanting to at all. 
But he did it. We all went with him over to the show 
grounds, Stevie Stevenson and Tom Mulligan and 
Mutt, Tom's dog, and me. 

There was a lady sitting out in front of one of the 
tents on a chair. She had been washing her hair, and 
it was spread out to dry over her shoulders, and she was 
sewing on a pair of boy's pants. She had on a pair of 
those big horn-rimmed glasses, and we could see from 
her hair, which had gray in it, that she was quite an 
old lady, though small. I heard later that she was all 
of thirty-five or thirty-six years old. 

The rest of us hung back a little ways, and Freckles 
went up to her and took off his hat. 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 221 

She laid down her sewing and smiled at him. 

"Well, my little man, what is it?" she said. "Were 
you looking for somebody?" 

"Yes, ma'am," says Freckles. He stuttered a little 
and he was standing on one foot. 

"For whom?" she asked. 

"For Little Eva," says Freckles. 

The lady stared at him, and then she smiled again. 

"And what do you want with Little Eva, sonny?" 
she said. 

Freckles, he stands on the other foot a while, and says 
nothing. And like as not he would have backed away, 
but Tom Mulligan yells: "You don't dast give it to her, 
Freck!" 

Then Freckles hands her the letter and gulps and 
says: "A letter for Miss Little Eva." 

The lady takes it and reads it. And then she 
reads it again. And then she calls out: "Jim! Oh, 
Jim!" 

A man comes out of the tent, and she hands it to him. 
He reads it, and his mouth drops open, and a pipe he is 
smoking falls on to the grass. 

"Jim," says the lady, "someone is making love to 
your wife!" 

Jim, he reads the letter again, and then he laughs. 
He laughes so hard he bends double, and catches the 
back of the lady's chair. And she laughs of a sudden 
and puts her hand in front of her face and laughs 
again. And then Jim, he says to Freckles, who has 
been getting redder and redder : 



222 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

"And who is Mr. H. Watson?" 

"Don't you get it?" says the lady, taking off her 
glasses to wipe them, and pointing to Freckles. "This 
is the boy that owns the dog that played the blood- 
hound last night, and he is Mr. H. Watson!" 

And when she took off her glasses like that, we all saw 
she was the Little Eva of that show! 

"Mr. H. Watson," says Jim to Freckles, "did you in- 
tend matrimony, or were you trying to flirt?" 

"Quit your kidding him, Jim," says Little Eva, still 
laughing. "Can't you see he's hacked nearly to 
death?" 

"None of your business what I intended!" yells 
Freckles to Jim. And he picks up a clod of dirt and 
nearly hits Jim with it, and runs. And we all run. 
But when we had run half a block, we looked back, and 
nobody was following us. Jim and Little Eva had 
busted out laughing again, and was laughing so hard 
they was hanging on to each other to keep from falling 
down. 

"Good-bye, Mr. H. Watson," yells Jim. "Is it really 
your own blood?" 

And then began a time of disgrace for Freckles and 
me such as I never hope to live through again. For the 
next thing those two boys that had been his friends was 
both dancing round him laughing and calling him Mr. 
H. Watson; and by the time we got down to the part of 
Main Street where the stores are, every boy and every 
dog in town was dancing around Freckles and hearing 
all about it and yelling, "H. Watson! Mr. H. Watson! 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 223 

Is it your own blood? Is it your own blood, Mr. H. 
Watson?" 

Freckles and I did the best we could, fighting all 
that was our size and some bigger; but after a couple of 
hours it got so that most any one could lick us. Kids 
that was afraid to stand up to him the day before could 
lick him easy, by now, and dogs I had always despised 
even to argue with began to get my number. All you 
could hear, on every side, was: "Is it your own blood, 
Mr. Watson?" 

And at noon we went home, but Freckles didn't go 
into the house for dinner at all. Instead, he went out 
to the barn and laid down in the hay, and I crawled in 
there with him. And he cried and cried and choked 
and choked. I felt sorry for him, and crawled up and 
licked his face. But he took me by the scruflf of the 
neck and slung me out of the haymow. When I crawled 
back again, he kicked me in the ribs, but he had on 
tennis shoes and it didn't hurt much, and anyhow I for- 
gave him. And I went and crawled back to where he 
was and nuzzled my head up under his armpit. And 
then he cried harder and hugged me and said I was the 
best dog in the world and the only friend he ever had. 

And then I licked his face again and he let me and 
we both felt better, and pretty soon he went to sleep 
there and slept for an hour or so, with his head on my 
ribs, and I lay there quiet so as not to wake him. Even 
when a flea got me, I let that flea bite and didn't scratch 
for fear of waking him. But after a while that flea got 
tired of me, and crawled over on to Freckles, and he 



224 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

waked natural. And when he waked, he was hungry, 
but he didn't want to go into the house for fear the 
story had spread to the grown-ups and he would have 
to answer questions. So he found a couple of raw tur- 
nips, and ate them, and a couple of apples, only they 
were green, and he milked the cow a little into an old 
tin cup and drank that. And in a little while he begins 
to have pains, and he thinks he is getting heart's dis- 
ease and is really going to die, but he says to himself 
out loud if he dies now he won't get any credit for it, 
and he would have enjoyed it more if he had died while 
he still thought Little Eva was young and beautiful and 
probably going to marry him in the end. 

But after awhile it seems turning from heart's dis- 
ease into some kind of stomach trouble; so he drinks 
some stuff out of a bottle that was left in the barn last 
spring when Bessie, the old roan mare, had the colic, 
and whether it is heart's disease or stomach trouble, 
that stuff cures him. And him and me drift along 
downtown again to see if maybe the kids have sort of 
begun to forget about it a little. 

But they hadn't. It had even spread to some of the 
grown-ups. We went into Freckles's father's drug 
store, and Mr. Watson told Freckles to step around to 
the post office and ask for his mail. And the clerk in 
the post office when we come in, looks at Freckles very 
solemn and says: 

"Ah, here is Mr. H. Watson, after a letter! Will 
you have a letter written in blood?" 

So Freckles told his dad there wasn't any mail, and 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 225 

we sneaked along home again. That night at supper I 
was lying on the porch just outside the dining room 
and the doors were open, and I heard Freckles's dad 
say: 

"Harold, would you like to go to the show to-night?" 

"No, Pa," says Freckles. 

His mother says that is funny; it is the first time she 
ever heard him refuse to go to a show of any kind. 
And his father asks him if anything special has hap- 
pened that makes him want to stay away from this 
particular show. I guess when his father says that. 
Freckles thinks his father is wise, too, so he says he has 
changed his mind and will go to the show after all. He 
didn't want to start any argument. 

So him and me sneaks down to the show grounds 
again. It is getting dark, but too early for the show, 
and every kid we know is hanging around outside. And 
what Freckles has had to stand for in the way of kid- 
ding beforehand is nothing to what comes now. For 
they all gets around him in a ring and shouts: "Here is 
the bridegroom! Here is Mr. H. Watson come to get 
married to Little Eva! And the wedding invitations 
are wrote in his own blood! His own blood! His own 
blood!" 

And the grown-ups beginning to go into the show 
all tell each other what the kids are getting at, and we 
hear them laughing to each other about it. Him and 
me was about the two downest-tail-and-head-hanging- 
est persons you ever saw. But we stayed. There wasn't 
no place else to go, except home, and we didn't want to 



226 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

go home and be asked again if there was any special 
reason for staying away from that particular show. 

And right in the midst of all the yelling and jostling 
around, a kid about Freckles's size comes out cf the 
show tent and walks over to the bunch and says: 

"Now, then, what's all this yelling about Little Eva 
for?" 

All the kids shut up, and this show kid says to 
Freckles : 

"Was they yelling bridegroom at youf*' 

Freckles, he was down, but he wasn't going to let any 
out-of-town boy get away with anything, either. All 
our own gang had him licked and disgraced, and he 
knew it; but this was a stranger, and so he spunked up. 

"S'pose they was yelling bridegroom at me," he says. 
"Ain't they got a right to yell bridegroom at me if they 
want to? This is a free country." 

"You won't be yelled bridegroom at if I say you 
won't," says the show kid. 

"I'll be yelled bridegroom at for all of you," says 
Freckles. "What's it to you?" 

"You won't be yelled bridegroom at about my 
mother," saws the show kid. 

"Who's being yelled bridegroom at about your 
mother?" says Freckles. "I'm being yelled at about 
Little Eva." 

"Well, then," says this kid, "Little Eva is my mother, 
and you got to stop being yelled at about her." 

"Well, then," says Freckles, "you just stop me being 
yelled at if you think you're big enough." 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 111 

"I could lick two your size/* says the show kid. "But 
I won't fight here. I won't fight in front of this crowd. 
If I was to fight here, your crowd might jump into me, 
too, and I would maybe have to use brass knucks, and 
if I was to use brass knucks, I would likely kill someone 
and be arrested for it. I'll fight in private like a duel, 
as gentlemen ought to." 

"Well, then," says Freckles, "if any one was to use 
brass knucks on me, I would have to use brass knucks 
on them, and I won't fight any one that uses brass 
knucks in private." 

"Well, then," says the show kid, "my brass knucks 
is in my trunk in the tent, and you don't dast to fol- 
low me and fight with bare fists." 

"My brass knucks is at home," says Freckles, which 
was the first I knew he ever had any, "and I do dast." 

So each one searched the other for brass knucks, and 
they went off together, me following. The fight was to 
be under the bridge over the crick down by the school- 
house on the edge of the woods. But when they got 
down there, the strip of sand by the side of the crick 
was in shadow. So they went on top of the bridge, to 
fight in the moonlight. But the moonlight was so 
bright they were afraid they would be seen by some 
farmer coming into town and maybe told on and ar- 
rested. So they sat down on the edge of the bridge with 
their feet hanging over and talked about where they had 
better fight to be private, as gentlemen should. And 
they got to talking of other things. And pretty soon 
they began to kind of like each other, and Freckles says : 



228 THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

''What's your name?" 

'Tercy/* says the show kid. ''But you better not 
call me that. I'd fight if I was called that out of the 
family. Call me Spike. What's your name?" 

"Well, then/' says Freckles, "I don't like mine either; 
mine is Harold. But call me Freckles." 

Spike says he wished he had more freckles himself. 
But he don't get much chance for freckles, he says; his 
mother takes such awful good care of all the complex- 
ions in their family. 

"Well, then," says Freckles, "I think your mother is 
an awful nice lady." 

Spike, all of a sudden, bursts out crying then and says 
how would Freckles like it if people wrote notes to his 
mother and was yelled at about her? And Freckles 
says how would he like it if he was the one was yelled 
at, and he never had any idea the lady was grown up 
and had a family, and he got to sniffling some himself. 

"Spike," he says, "you tell your mother I take it all 
back. You tell her I was in love with her till I seen her 
plain off the stage, and since I have seen her and her 
family plain, I don't care two cents for her. And 
I'll write her an apology for falling into love with 
her." 

Which he done it, then and there, in the moonlight, 
jabbing his fountain pen into his wart, and it read: 



Dear Little Eva. Since I seen your husband and son I 
decided not to say anything about matrimony, and beg 
your pardon for it. This is wrote in my blood and sets you 



WRITTEN IN BLOOD 229 

free to fall in love with who you please. You are older and 
look different from what I expected, and so let us forget 
bygones. 

Yours truly, 

H. Watson. 

"Spike," says Freckles, when they were walking back 
to town together, chewing licorice and pretending it was 
tobacco, "do you really have some brass knucks?" 

"No," says Spike. "Do you, Freckles?" 

"No," says Freckles. 

And they went back to the tent together and asked 
the gang if they wanted any of their game, and no- 
body did, and the disgrace lifted. 

And I felt so good about that and the end of the love- 
affair and everything, that right then and there I hunted 
up that Burning Deck dog and give him the licking of 
his life, which I had never been able to do before. 



THE END 









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